HDC bran tub or lotto

There was the Prime Minister’s promise to unleash the havoc-making dogs of war. Presumably these were Class A dogs.

If Senator Camille Robinson- Regis is to be believed, we treat our Members of Parliament like dogs. Presumably like beach-begging “pot-hongs”. Well forget explanations and apologies. Read the signs of the times: the campaign for the 2015 general election has begun.

Mrs Robinson-Regis has all but announced it. The unfortunate statement about “rats coming out of their holes” was only the “carried away” practising for the campaign platform.

The 2015 election is coming on the heels of a period dominated by crime and marked by scandal.

The feverish advertising these days of “your Government working for you” is designed to illustrate that crime and scandal are only the result of a lack of communication between government and people. There may well be insufficient communication or too much of it.

There may, however, be another reason: a lack of policies which rhyme with the reality of a veritable crisis of our social institutions. No, not with individual reality.

There has been a commendable sympathy with individuals: burial funding for a woman whose husband has been killed in an accident, funding for a child with a rare disease which can be treated in Argentina, accommodation for a family left homeless after a fire, money and hampers for unexpected flooding destroying home and crops, help for a calypsonian bedridden.

These are all likely to get assistance thanks to the Prime Minister and/or minister.

In addition it favours the “human interest” stories beloved of the media and it fosters a certain image of the giver as “nice”. However, it neither questions nor changes structures nor institutions. Nor do we have the information to question either. I have seen two recent occasions of desperate men interrupting politician walkabouts with the demand for employment, not only for them but for people of their area.

They were met with a lofty and wooly reply.

We are unlikely to question. After all, we have been told that unemployment is only three and a half percent.

What we were not told was that part-time jobs including CEPEP, URP, OTT etc were counted as employment.

We were also not told that Colour Me Orange had been withdrawn from desperate areas in the North and there was nothing else. The social situation which gave rise to the individual tragedies remains.

Housing

Housing and the geography of settlement have an important impact on the nature and cohesion of the family and of the community.

It is not by chance that the rapid urbanism everywhere over the past 50 years has been accompanied by smaller families, the decline of home industries and the increase in the numbers of women who work outside of the home. Housing may also govern the access to women particularly in the separation of sleeping space.

Social housing was one of the casualties of our IMF years.

This was followed by a boom in real estate.

The emergence of the “developer” as the principal social agent of home construction also means that profit became the major consideration in building. The result has been the cost of housing and of rents. These have soared. So have gravel, sharp sand and landfill and aggregate.

A one-bedroom flat in Arouca or Sangre Grande may cost upwards of $1,600 a month. And there may be the restriction of no children, no pets, no plants. Or only a single man or woman. (In passing, has our family, no contraception boys and girls, seen this?) Buying? One lot of land is going in Caparo for $185,000.

One lot in Las Lomas for $175,000, in Grande for $270,000.

Buying a house? Safe to consider a million and upwards.

HDC

It is not surprising that there has been a rush for social housing, ie, HDC houses. Newsday’s Andre Bagoo quotes a report of the Joint Select Committees of Parliament as stating that there are now over 214,000 applicants on record for HDC housing.

That in a population of 1.4 million is bad enough. It may not, however, include dependents who live in the same household. We then find that 25 percent of houses allocated “…are done at the discretion of the Minister of Housing.” See where that niceness comes from?

It is not the exception in an otherwise rational allocation according to clear and transparent rules. It is itself, the method of allocation.

As if this is not enough, except for quotes for the armed forces and the elderly, houses are randomly allocated.

In other words, our social housing at best follows the rules of a bran tub or a lotto — after the minister’s 25 percent.

For many of our compatriots squatting is not an option. It is a necessity. And more to come.

Marion O’Callaghan

Social Anthropologist,

formerly Director of Social Science Programmes, UNESCO