I want to share a sto­ry about what hap­pened in my com­mu­ni­ty dur­ing this Christ­mas sea­son. While most of us were en­joy­ing the hol­i­days and do­ing all the tra­di­tion­al things Tri­nis like to do, like new cur­tains, paint­ing, fur­nish­ing etc, the res­i­dents of Carl­ton Lane, San Fer­nan­do was dealt a blow that turned their lives up­side down. It was like go­ing from 50 to 100 mph in two sec­onds. Let me share what hap­pened.

Carl­ton Lane is a pub­lic hous­ing de­vel­op­ment run by the HDC and has been around from over 70 years. It's lo­cat­ed just off Cipero Street, a few blocks away from San Fer­nan­do Boys and Girls gov­ern­ment schools and very close in prox­im­i­ty to sev­er­al promi­nent places in San Fer­nan­do like Cof­fee Street, Rush­worth Street, Skin­ner Park to name a few.

It falls in the con­stituen­cy of San Fer­nan­do West and the lo­cal elec­toral dis­trict of les Ef­forts East/Cipero. Cur­rent MP is Car­olyn Seep­er­sad Bachan and Navid Mu­radali is the cur­rent May­or of the City of San Fer­nan­do. There are 60 poor fam­i­lies who live in these HDC apart­ments and most of them have been there through gen­er­a­tions for over 70 years.

In late De­cem­ber, the HDC hasti­ly called a meet­ing with the res­i­dents and told them that they were go­ing to re­lo­cate them to a dif­fer­ent hous­ing de­vel­op­ment, some place, some­where to be de­cid­ed at a lat­er date. At the an­nounce­ment, every­one was shocked, es­pe­cial­ly since the HDC al­so an­nounced that the re­lo­ca­tion would be in about 6-8 weeks' time.

That ba­si­cal­ly summed up the meet­ing and then it end­ed. Res­i­dents walked away cry­ing, sad, dev­as­tat­ed, hope­less and did not know what their fu­ture would be. Con­ver­sa­tions raged on among res­i­dents in the days fol­low­ing and as the re­al­i­ty sunk in for all those poor fam­i­lies, Christ­mas was def­i­nite­ly on hold for them be­cause of the un­cer­tain­ty and sud­den up­root­ing.

The ma­jor­i­ty of fam­i­lies liv­ing in Carl­ton lane are poor, min­i­mum wage work­ing class cit­i­zens. They don't have much but are proud of their com­mu­ni­ty. Every gen­er­a­tion of every fam­i­ly of every house­hold grew up there and called it home, and then one late No­vem­ber with­out any warn­ing, the HDC came and pulled the rug out from un­der them. The worst part was yet to come, as the res­i­dents were to find out in mid De­cem­ber, right be­fore Christ­mas.

The HDC had set up in­di­vid­ual meet­ings with each fam­i­ly and told them that they will most like­ly be re­lo­cat­ed out­side of the con­stituen­cy and they were go­ing to see their rent in­creased by 700-800 per cent. The res­i­dents were left dev­as­tat­ed once again and they were all sure that Christ­mas 2012 was not go­ing to hap­pen for them.

Every­one was too dis­traught to think about Christ­mas be­cause now their im­me­di­ate prob­lem was re­lo­cat­ing to a new lo­ca­tion cut­ting them off from ac­ces­si­ble ameni­ties and the sud­den dras­tic in­crease in rent which 99 per cent of them can­not af­ford.

In ad­di­tion, the HDC im­posed strict ap­pli­ca­tion re­quire­ments on these res­i­dents as if they were ap­ply­ing for hous­ing for the first time, so the res­i­dents quick­ly found out that this was not re­lo­ca­tion, but an evic­tion and re-ap­pli­ca­tion for a place to live.

It is very dis­heart­en­ing to all the res­i­dents be­cause it felt like they were be­ing tak­en ad­van­tage of by the HDC and they had no voice in the mat­ter, so that's why I'm writ­ing to let an au­di­ence, any au­di­ence know, that the peo­ple of Carl­ton Lane are re­al­ly hurt, and if the HDC has the up­per hand through their pow­ers to evict poor peo­ple and leave them at the side of the road, then we the peo­ple have a voice to let our fel­low cit­i­zens know what is go­ing on.

It's not just a mat­ter of re­lo­ca­tion, the HDC is miss­ing the pic­ture, it's about com­mu­ni­ty and fam­i­ly lives and their liveli­hood. Carl­ton Lane is cen­tral to com­mer­cial and gov­ern­ment ameni­ties, in­clud­ing hos­pi­tals, schools, gro­ceries, etc, so for poor fam­i­lies it's a per­fect lo­ca­tion and af­fords them the abil­i­ty to use every day ser­vice with­out added cost.

Carl­ton lane is one of the bet­ter pub­lic hous­ing de­vel­op­ments in­fra­struc­tures-wise. Each build­ing has four apart­ments and the struc­ture is very strong. Through the Min­istry of Hous­ing, the Min­is­ter set up a pro­gramme where the res­i­dents of Mon Re­pos pub­lic hous­ing apart­ments, re­fur­bished their apart­ments and made them look good-a self help project.

Why can't they do that for the res­i­dents of Carl­ton Lane? Where is the MP and Coun­cilor to come to the res­cue of these poor peo­ple?

Please help us as the HDC is mov­ing swift­ly to dis­rupt the lives of these poor fam­i­lies and the man­ner in which the HDC han­dled this is ex­treme­ly ap­palling and in­sen­si­tive. They are turn­ing peo­ple's lives up­side down.

Con­cerned Res­i­dents

Carl­ton Lane, San Fer­nan­do