Rowley: Govt to regularise NHA units

Housing Minister Dr Keith Rowley said yesterday that Government was trying to work with the private sector to arrive at a very cheap housing unit, “somewhere in the order of $60,000 to $65,000,” which would allow persons at the lowest rung of the economic ladder to own a home. Rowley lamented, however, that as Government tried to put a comprehensive housing policy in place to cater for even the lowest income levels, it continued to face the problem of new squatting. He was speaking at a post-Cabinet news conference at Whitehall. On the issue of arrears owned by homeowners, Rowley said the problem Government was facing was the absence of a business culture in treating with the housing stock.

He said a report on one public sector housing project in the Port-of-Spain area revealed that 25 percent of the people who were supposed to be living in the units are not living there. “They were either dead or away” while the units were being “marketed” by other people. “Now clearly that cannot be an acceptable business arrangement,” he said. He said if people in a rental arrangement with the NHA have died, then the arrears are accruing to a dead man or woman. “And the people who are using the property have no liability,” he noted. Therefore, he stated that the Ministry was in the process of cleaning up the database at the NHA to ensure that it had accurate information so that it could enter into a new business arrangement with persons who are occupying units, which were originally rented out to other persons.

“Our aim is to regularise,” he said, adding that Government did not plan as a first option to put out people, but aimed at treating with this situation in a humane way. “The NHA is not meant to provide free housing,” he said, adding that it involved people entering into a business arrangement with the State’s landlord (NHA). “What is unacceptable is for persons who can discharge their responsibilities not to do so, because the system is so poor that it (not discharging their obligation) goes unnoticed,” he said.