Public housing units lack practices to ensure safety, timely maintenance: N.B. AG

New Brunswick’s auditor general released a performance audit on Tuesday.

New Brunswick Auditor General Paul Martin says public housing units in the province lack systems and practices to ensure they’re well-maintained, safe and habitable for tenants on a timely basis.

In a report released Tuesday, Martin said unit inspections by the New Brunswick Housing Corporation weren’t being monitored as required, nor were they being done consistently.

“It appears there’s a failure in the system,” said Martin.

The auditor general’s report investigated 3,045 work orders issued for pests and bed bugs, and found 53 per cent weren’t meeting maintenance timeline targets. Of those 3,045 work orders, 53 cases took between 366 and 1,068 days to resolve.

“Overall we found that nobody is following up on most of the work orders,” said Martin. “That’s why they’re taking over a year to get accomplished.”

Despite the corporation’s 30-day turnaround policy, the auditor general’s report found it took an average of 140 days to fill vacant units.

“If anything is most frustrating, it’s the wait list and vacancy turnaround,” said Martin. “We’re in a situation where there’s a need for housing.”

The audit was based on information from April 2023 to the end of 2024.

Martin also said the corporation hadn’t established a budget allocation for the 2024-25 fiscal year, making it impossible to monitor spending and to make resource allocation decisions.

The New Brunswick Housing Corporation maintains 4,630 units across the province.

‘Quite a scandal’

David Hickey, minister responsible for the New Brunswick Housing Corporation, said the auditor general’s report confirmed issues the provincial government was focused on fixing.

“The alarm bell has already been sounding in our department around maintenance and that has been clear from day one,” said Hickey. “What my team has been begging for, and what our maintenance staff has been begging for on the ground, is support and more help to be able to do the job they’ve been asked to do. Right now, the demand is too much on them.”

Hickey said an 18.6 per cent increase to the New Brunswick Housing Corporation’s 2025-26 fiscal budget would help.

“We will do better,” said Hickey. “We need to do better.”

The waitlist for public housing in New Brunswick currently stands at around 12,000 people.

Green Party Leader David Coon said he often answers inquiries at his local constituency office about the condition of public housing units in Fredericton, with the auditor general’s report pointing to how widespread the issue is.

“It’s really quite a scandal,” said Coon. “We’ve got to think about it from the perspective of the tenants. These are their homes, the government is their landlord, and it’s been behaving as a slumlord as far as I can see.”

NB Power early retirement program

In a separate chapter released Tuesday, Martin said an early retirement program offered to NB Power employees in 2022 overstated cost-saving benefits, while having inadequate governance and oversight.

Martin said there were discrepancies in the application of program rules with a lack of adequate information provided to the board as part of its decision-making.

Eligibility for the early retirement program required employees to be 55 or older on Dec. 31, 2022, and have two years or more of service to NB Power.

The AG report said some employees who accepted an early retirement package later returned to NB Power in contract positions.

Prior to the program’s introduction, eight NB Power employees who had previously informed the utility about their plans to retire were paid $1.15 million in incentive costs.

Altogether, NB Power’s early retirement program costs $17 million.

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