WAS IT MERE RHETORIC ?

The only thing new about Housing Minister Dr Keith Rowley’s statement that many persons had defaulted on their rental and mortgage payments to the National Housing Authority (NHA) was the current figure of some $200 million. Does Rowley’s assertion, however, that the delinquency was unacceptable and would not be tolerated mean that Government was at last determined to end the tacit subsidy of defaulters’ lifestyles? Was this a signal that tenants who persisted in refusing to discharge their liabilities would be evicted, and mortgagors have their properties seized? 

But does Government have the political will to allow the NHA to evict defaulting tenants, many of whom because of their declared or inferred incomes are in a position to pay yet refuse to do so? Additionally, will it give the NHA and/or Sugar Industry Labour Welfare Committee the go ahead to seize the properties of defaulting mortgagors? Or was Dr Rowley’s statement, admittedly with respect to persons owing the NHA, mere rhetoric? A substantial number of the thousands of persons who rented housing units, many for as low as $9 and $12 a month in downtown Port-of-Spain have not made any payments for more than 20 years. In turn, scores of the former sugar workers in Caroni who had received loans from the Sugar Industry Labour Welfare Committee at the low interest rate of one per cent per annum have for years not met their mortgage payments, some, initially, as low as $27 a month. And while their loans were not obtained from the National Housing Authority nonetheless they fell, as the NHA loans, under the umbrella of the Ministry of Housing and taxpayer funding.

The $200 million NHA debt figure, should it be recovered and placed in a Government revolving housing loan fund, could provide necessary financing over the years for the construction of several thousands of additional housing units. Meanwhile, a substantial number of NHA’s rental units has been repaired and/or repainted. Has any effort been made by the Authority to recover monies owed it? Has the response been positive, however modest, in any of the areas, St George, Caroni, Victoria? Or has there been downright refusal to comply? What excuses have been offered by tenants and/or mortgagors, some of whom drive expensive cars? Clearly, in all too many cases defaulters, scores with a mistaken sense of priorities have apparently believed that taxpayers should subsidise their lifestyles. It should be inconceivable, however, that in 2004 in a country with a minimum wage of $8 an hour there should be people who, earning that and much more, can maintain or imply that they cannot afford a monthly rental of $9!

Rowley is not the first Government Minister to have raised the issue of the monstrous debt owed the National Housing Authority by defaulters. Unfortunately, past Governments appeared to have weighed the action of recovering the huge debts owed against the political cost. But with the cost of land and construction skyrocketing, along with the clear denial of citizens of needed social, educational and health services by individuals who insist on not paying their rents and/or mortgages, Government needs to find the political will to act.