Housing has to meet the needs of the occupant

By Rick Garrick

THUNDER BAY – Adaptive Housing and Architecture Planning were among the 18 workshops presented at the First Nations Housing Conference, held Feb. 6-8 in Thunder Bay.

“I’m an inspector for all six (Ogemawahj Tribal Council) communities, so I go in and inspect various housing programs, new builds, renovation projects,” says Jackie Hall, infrastructure specialist with Ogemawahj Tribal Council. “What I presented on (at the conference) is the concept of how we need to adapt the way we build our homes so we can meet the different needs of the community. Obviously it’s the housing managers in each housing department that have to start considering a different way of looking at their housing developments and varying their housing portfolio, but what I was doing was trying to bring to the forefront and highlight how we need to change the way we build some of our houses to ensure all aspects and all people of our community are housed properly.”

Hall adds that the planning process needs to include all the departments in the community.

“Gone are the times when you could plan in a silo,” Hall says. “You have to almost have a collaborative effort in the community to ensure that all the plans are being met.”

Hall also highlighted how some communities in B.C. are building tiny homes as an innovative way to meet the needs of homeless people.

“That’s the biggest thing for me, the house has to fit the occupant,” Hall says. “It has to meet the needs of the occupant.”

Eladia Smoke, founder of Smoke Architecture and master lecturer at Laurentian University’s McEwen School of Architecture, spoke about how suburban-style homes are not a good fit for First Nation communities during her presentation on Architecture Planning.

“It’s not really appropriate to climate, it’s not appropriate to our lifestyle and it’s not appropriate to our way of being in the world,” Smoke says. “What I’d like to see is First Nations take back ownership of the means of construction, the labour of construction and the design of their own buildings.”

Smoke says there are only about 14 Indigenous architects in Canada.

“We are a tiny percentage of the architects in Canada,” Smoke says. “So there are very few of us, but we are now starting to collaborate and talk with each other. Our goal is to find ways of supporting our communities … to take back the reins of our building processes.”

The First Nations Housing Conference also featured the Community Housing Recognition Awards, which were presented to three communities this year, Wunnumin, Rainy River and Nibinamik, and the Builder’s Challenge competition, which focused on the proper installation of a window.

“It’s taking the rain screen principle of walls and applying it to the window insertion,” says Jon Eakes, a nationally recognized home renovation expert who has hosted the challenge for about eight years. “That basically means we have a water-tight wrapping all around the rough window frame. The window goes in leaving a drainage plain where any water that gets in can fall and letting the wind in the bottom because that pushes water back out. So we use the wind to keep the water away from the house.”

Jonathan Gregg, a working group member for the First Nations Housing Conference, says there were participants from about 126 First Nations from seven provinces across the country at the conference.

“People enjoyed the sessions, they liked the atmosphere, the dialogue, the networking,” Gregg says. “And a lot of people said they are going to return next year.”