Twen­ty five fam­i­lies are now the proud re­cip­i­ents of sub­sidy agree­ments from the Pro­gramme Mon­i­tor­ing Co­or­di­nat­ing and Eval­u­a­tion Unit (PM­CEU).

How­ev­er, Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said this sub­sidy agree­ment was on­ly ap­plic­a­ble to peo­ple who met the cri­te­ria of hav­ing a cer­tain month­ly house­hold in­come.

“One cri­te­ri­on that had to be met and is scrupu­lous­ly en­forced is a max­i­mum month­ly house­hold in­come of $8000,” said Robin­son-Reg­is.

At the small cer­e­mo­ny held at the HDC Build­ing in South Quay on Wednes­day, the PM­CEU dis­trib­uted two dif­fer­ent types of sub­sidy agree­ments, one for home im­prove­ment and the oth­er for home con­struc­tion.

“You the 25 ben­e­fi­cia­ries are 17 for home im­prove­ments with a val­ue of $20,000 each and eight for home con­struc­tion with a val­ue of $50,000.”

The min­is­ter re­vealed that the home con­struc­tion al­lot­ment would not be giv­en in one lump sum to the re­cip­i­ents, but in sec­tions.

She said it would be “payable in two tranch­es, $25,000 first and then on proof of progress the fur­ther $25,000.”

Ac­cord­ing to Robin­son-Reg­is, “These sub­si­dies have up­lift­ed the stan­dard of liv­ing of thou­sands of fam­i­lies from just about every re­gion of our coun­try.”

Thus far the min­istry has processed 1995 of which 1188 were for home im­prove­ment sub­si­dies, and 807 for home con­struc­tion sub­si­dies.

“This pro­gramme was de­signed to pro­vide hous­ing so­lu­tions to el­i­gi­ble cit­i­zens who as­pire to en­hance their qual­i­ty of life, not so much for them­selves, but re­al­ly and more im­por­tant­ly for their chil­dren.”

The min­is­ter said af­ford­able hous­ing plays a crit­i­cal role in pro­vid­ing a sense of sta­bil­i­ty to all fam­i­lies specif­i­cal­ly those at the low­er end of the eco­nom­ic scale.

“This ur­ban up­grad­ing pro­gram, ladies and gen­tle­men, is per­fect­ly aligned not on­ly with the roadmap to re­cov­ery ob­jec­tive... of our strate­gic plan for Trinidad and To­ba­go known as vi­sion 2030. And that goal is to en­sure that all cit­i­zens have ac­cess to af­ford­able and ad­e­quate hous­ing.”

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Adri­an Leonce said these sub­si­dies form part of the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) fund­ed ur­ban up­grad­ing and re­vi­tal­iza­tion pro­gram, which seeks to im­prove the liv­ing con­di­tions of cit­i­zens.

He says through this ini­tia­tive per­sons “will now be able to un­der­take much-need­ed home re­pairs to your ex­ist­ing hous­ing struc­ture.” These re­pairs in­clude roof and floor re­pairs, in­stal­la­tion of new tiles, ad­di­tion­al rooms, elec­tri­cal works and plumb­ing to name a few.

Leonce urged the re­cip­i­ents to use this sub­sidy agree­ment op­por­tu­ni­ty sen­si­bly.

“It is im­por­tant to its con­tin­ued suc­cess that you take these sub­si­dies and do your part, make the min­istry proud and use your al­lo­cat­ed fund­ing wise­ly.”