AMHC requests mortgage payments

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Evicted family leaves tent

After six days of living in a tent, a Metis family of seven, who were evicted from their house, have moved into a government trailer.

Louise Gardiner, her husband and five children, ranging in age from two to 16, had been living in the tent near their empty house for the past week after being evicted by the RCMP and a sheriff.

"It was a helluva way to wake up," says Louise Gardiner in a telephone interview from her Grouard location, 350 km northwest of Edmonton.

The family moved from the tent to the trailer after they agreed to release $3,835 in back mortgage payments held in trust by Social Services.

Earlier, the family had refused to release the money but had a change of mind when housing officials agreed to have an engineer re-examine alleged structural flaws within three weeks.

The Gardiners owe close to $6,800 in mortgage payments to Alberta Housing and Mortgage Corporation (AHMC) and say they will not negotiate payment of outstanding arrears until the house is repaired to their satisfaction. But Louise Gardiner is not confident that the house can be adequately repaired, claiming "it's crazy to fix this house . . . how long are you (AMHC) going to try to revive this dead horse?"

For the past 20 months the family has withheld mortgage payments on the home they moved into nine years ago because the corporation failed to repair long standing structural problems which caused the basement to flood and the sewage system to back up.

"If I wasn't standing ankle deep in water then I was standing ankle deep in sh", says Gardiner

Social Services spent $10,000 trying to fix problems with the sewage system but the Gardiners say they still had to use an outside toilet.

Gardiner says she refused to make mortgage payments to get the attention of AMHC, explaining, "As long as my money was coming in they weren't doing nothing."

The family is now paying $300 a month for the three bedroom government trailer and will have to set up a repayment schedule with AMHC in order to get their house and land back.

The family is one of 26 families who bought stackwall houses which were built under a Native housing program ten years ago.

Joan McCracken, AMHC manager of communications says the corporation is pleased that an agreement has been reached.