KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Three years af­ter Neisha Wat­t­ley gained no­to­ri­ety for her “that mak­ing sense” re­sponse to Gov­ern­ment grant­i­ng her im­pov­er­ished fam­i­ly State hous­ing in Freeport, she has been kicked out.

Wat­t­ley’s evic­tion by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) came yes­ter­day af­ter res­i­dents of Eden Gar­dens com­plained about il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties tak­ing place at the house where she, her com­mon-law hus­band Chris Ramb­hal and four chil­dren lived.

The HDC said it re­trieved the three-bed­room, two-bath­room house fol­low­ing a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion, which re­vealed that the fam­i­ly had not oc­cu­pied the unit for quite some time. Sev­er­al in­ter­ven­tions were made by HDC’s So­cial and Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vices De­part­ment, Mort­gage and Rentals De­part­ment and Al­lo­ca­tions De­part­ment to work with the fam­i­ly. How­ev­er, the HDC said she did not take ad­van­tage of the op­tions giv­en.

“It is quite un­for­tu­nate that af­ter nu­mer­ous at­tempts to help Ms Wat­t­ley, we had to take this ac­tion. I do hope that she is able to re­ceive the req­ui­site sup­port from oth­er State agen­cies to help her and her young chil­dren with the chal­lenges she may be ex­pe­ri­enc­ing,” HDC’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Brent Lyons said yes­ter­day.

The house will now be al­lo­cat­ed to an­oth­er per­son or fam­i­ly on the pub­lic hous­ing data­base. The HDC said Wat­t­ley’s case is one of many which re­quired ac­tion over the past six months dur­ing which it has in­creased its ver­i­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cis­es in or­der to iden­ti­fy breach­es re­lat­ed to il­le­gal oc­cu­pan­cy, non-oc­cu­pa­tion and oth­er home­own­er breach­es. Once a home­own­er is found to be in breach of the rules and reg­u­la­tions, the HDC said due process will be fol­lowed to en­force the rules and reg­u­la­tions.

Wat­t­ley, a mar­ket ven­dor, had a trag­ic shot in­to the spot­light in 2014 when she cra­dled her un­con­scious six-month-old son Christo­pher Ramb­hal in her arms and ran fran­ti­cal­ly in the mid­dle of the night for help. At a po­lice sta­tion, al­most a half mile away, she wait­ed 30 min­utes for an am­bu­lance. But by the time they ar­rived at a hos­pi­tal, Christo­pher had died. An au­top­sy re­vealed that he choked while be­ing breast­fed by Wat­t­ley, who had fall­en asleep.

It was then the coun­try saw the squalor Wat­t­ley and her fam­i­ly suf­fered in their small, win­dow­less shack, with no wa­ter or elec­tric­i­ty, in a bushy area near the river­bank in Per­se­ver­ance, Ch­agua­nas. Then Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment, Ver­nel­la Al­leyne-Top­pin promised help with gov­ern­ment hous­ing or a lot of land through the Land for the Land­less pro­gramme. Al­leyne-Top­pin al­so said she would help the fam­i­ly to start their own busi­ness.

In De­cem­ber 2016, for­mer Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell pre­sent­ed Wat­t­ley and her fam­i­ly with keys to their home, $20,000 worth of items from a lo­cal fur­ni­ture and ap­pli­ance com­pa­ny and a pre-paid en­ter­tain­ment tele­vi­sion pack­age.

In a sub­se­quent me­dia in­ter­view, Wat­t­ley said the lo­ca­tion of her new home was dif­fi­cult for com­mut­ing her­self and chil­dren and want­ed to be re­lo­cat­ed. It was re­port­ed that she even said that she would go back to her shack. It was then she made her in­fa­mous “That mak­ing any sense?” com­ment, which saw her be­ing the sub­ject of pub­lic dis­cus­sions and so­cial me­dia memes, but al­so land­ed her a gig in a par­ty pro­mo­tion.

The HDC said that fol­low­ing the al­lo­ca­tion, its So­cial and Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vices De­part­ment main­tained con­tact with Wat­t­ley and her fam­i­ly in an ef­fort to fa­cil­i­tate a seam­less tran­si­tion to home own­er­ship and com­mu­ni­ty liv­ing. On sev­er­al oc­ca­sions when HDC of­fi­cials vis­it­ed, she was not there and neigh­bours told Guardian Me­dia that the oc­cu­pant of the house had bro­ken in­to res­i­dent’s home.