More hous­ing should be pro­vid­ed clos­er to the ur­ban cen­tres and towns amid grow­ing con­cern about traf­fic con­ges­tion in the coun­try.

While ad­dress­ing the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s “Fu­ture of Hous­ing” sym­po­sium” at the Gov­ern­ment cam­pus this week, Dr Robin Ro­jack, lead spe­cial­ist for hous­ing and ur­ban de­vel­op­ment at the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank, ex­plained that in the past few decades many new hous­ing de­vel­op­ments had emerged fur­ther away from ma­jor road­ways.

“There are some wor­ry­ing signs, a sense that it’s go­ing away from all the eco­nom­ic cen­tres. If you look at the San­gre Grande Va­len­cia area, the Princes Town re­gion again, fur­ther away from the main high­way net­work and fur­ther away from the main eco­nom­ic cen­tres and the towns and cities that we have.

“So that is a con­cern, from the point of view of sus­tain­abil­i­ty, from the point of view of the con­ges­tion and the dai­ly toll it has on our lives,” said Ro­jack who not­ed that in many cas­es new de­vel­op­ments were of­ten un­der­served by road net­works re­duc­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of these ar­eas be­ing eas­i­ly ser­viced by pub­lic trans­port ser­vices.

“You will see a con­cen­tra­tion on the east-west cor­ri­dor again or the north-south part on the west coast. But you see a lot of green dots hap­pen­ing to spread out be­yond that, which are not well ser­viced by the road net­work. And there­fore not well ser­viced by the po­ten­tial for mass tran­sit or bus rapid tran­sit or some­thing of that na­ture,” said Dr Ro­jack.

Dur­ing the event, Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Pen­ne­lope Beck­les ex­plained the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion up­dat­ed the “Hi­er­ar­chy of Set­tle­ments Re­lat­ing to Build­ing Heights and oth­er De­vel­op­ment Stan­dards, for eleven ma­jor sub-ar­eas or com­mu­ni­ties with­in Port-of-Spain.”

The ar­eas are Co­corite, St James, Wood­brook, Long Cir­cu­lar, St Clair, Eller­slie Park, Rook­ery Nook, Fed­er­a­tion Park, New­town, Tran­quil­i­ty, up­town and down­town Port-of-Spain.

She said, “The core el­e­ments of the up­dat­ed hi­er­ar­chy of set­tle­ments re­lat­ing to build­ing heights and oth­er de­vel­op­ment stan­dards, are mov­ing away from the old guide­lines in­to the fu­ture, to fa­cil­i­tate res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial de­vel­op­ment, to pro­vide a va­ri­ety of hous­ing and busi­ness op­tions ap­plic­a­ble to each com­mu­ni­ty, in­creased bed­room den­si­ties, a re­duc­tion in lot sizes, greater al­lowances for build­ing heights and the num­ber of floors, in­creased max­i­mum build­ing cov­er­age for high-den­si­ty res­i­den­tial ar­eas and in­creased floor area ra­tios.”

The ad­just­ments would im­pact po­ten­tial hous­ing projects planned for the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of Port-of-Spain, the min­is­ter ex­plained as she note that there had been ques­tions about ex­plor­ing de­vel­op­ing land spaces in the cap­i­tal city.

“While the ques­tion of vi­a­bil­i­ty re­gard­ing ur­ban de­vel­op­ments in the cap­i­tal city may arise, the Port of Port-of-Spain Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Project aims to es­tab­lish T&T’s cap­i­tal as a pre­mier lo­ca­tion for com­merce, cul­ture and en­ter­tain­ment, with a high ap­peal for lo­cal res­i­dents and in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors alike.

“Sev­er­al min­istries and gov­ern­ment agen­cies have brought for­ward pro­pos­als for the project, fo­cus­ing on res­i­den­tial de­vel­op­ment, tourism, and en­ter­tain­ment, as well as recre­ation­al, com­mer­cial and cul­tur­al ac­tiv­i­ties,” said the min­is­ter.

The Plan­ning Min­is­ter ex­plained that while new hous­ing fa­cil­i­ties in and around the cap­i­tal are a key part of the project, it would al­so re­quire a re­work­ing of the trans­porta­tion net­work around the city.

“Some el­e­ments of the project will sup­port af­ford­able hous­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties, as there are el­e­ments of the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion project at var­i­ous stages of fea­si­bil­i­ty stud­ies and re­quests for pro­pos­als, which in­clude an in­ter-city tran­sit sys­tem, city gate tran­sit hub de­vel­op­ment, mixed-use de­vel­op­ment at the Sal­va­tori Site on In­de­pen­dence Square, the Pic­cadil­ly Street Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment, and a po­ten­tial mixed-use de­vel­op­ment project at the Pow­er­Gen site, among oth­ers,” said the min­is­ter.

How­ev­er, these plans re­quire sig­nif­i­cant cap­i­tal, which she ex­plained the gov­ern­ment alone could not pro­vide.

“While gov­ern­ment-led con­struc­tion projects form a large part of this ven­ture, the pri­vate sec­tor is a key stake­hold­er as well, through pub­lic pri­vate part­ner­ship (PPP) arrange­ments,” said Min­is­ter Beck­les.

The HDC host­ed the sym­po­sium to en­cour­age just that, in­creased pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment in pub­lic hous­ing through Pub­lic Pri­vate part­ner­ships.

HDC man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Jay­selle Mc­Far­lane ex­plained that with the num­ber of ap­pli­cants for pub­lic hous­ing creep­ing up to 200,000, in­vestors from the pub­lic sec­tor were al­most guar­an­teed new clients through such a part­ner­ship.

“Part­ner­ship with the HDC gives you a read­i­ly avail­able and ac­ces­si­ble data­base of prospec­tive clients, and there­fore a foot in the door to vast po­ten­tial for ei­ther new or ad­di­tion­al in­come streams, and by ex­ten­sion in­creased prof­itabil­i­ty.

“More­over, as you have done in the past, you have pro­vid­ed dif­fer­ent fi­nanc­ing so­lu­tions to your cus­tomers for ac­tiv­i­ties like ed­u­ca­tion, trans­porta­tion, home re­pairs and home pur­chas­es,” said Mc­Far­lane,” the HDC is of­fer­ing you the po­ten­tial to part­ner with us to pro­vide 196,592 hous­ing so­lu­tions, and in so do­ing, leave a lega­cy both in terms of your cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, but more­so, in terms of your faith in the peo­ple of T&T.”

At the sym­po­sium Mc­Far­lane not­ed the high­est de­mand for hous­ing. These ar­eas were the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion, Ch­agua­nas, San Fer­nan­do, Ari­ma, and Diego Mar­tin.

“Col­lec­tive­ly these ar­eas rep­re­sent 61 per­cent of the to­tal de­mand for hous­ing so­lu­tions,” said Mc­Far­lane.

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Adri­an Leonce point­ed out that there had been some suc­cess al­ready for con­trac­tors through the pub­lic-pri­vate arrange­ment,

He said, “Both the Min­istry of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment and the HDC have shown them­selves re­mark­ably open to pub­lic pri­vate part­ner­ships.

“Al­ready, with NH In­ter­na­tion­al and the Fur­ness Group, the Min­istry has en­tered in­to two long-term pri­vate pub­lic part­ner­ships to pro­vide hous­ing so­lu­tions to both mid­dle and up­per mid­dle-class cus­tomers. NH In­ter­na­tion­al is cur­rent­ly con­struct­ing close to 160 apart­ments in the Mt Hope Area while the Fur­ness Group is con­struct­ing an­oth­er 90 in the San Fer­nan­do area.”

But he stat­ed that this ap­peal was not sim­ply a call for help, but a recog­ni­tion that the task was greater than what the gov­ern­ment could ac­com­mo­date.

He said, “I can state quite cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that the HDC is in no po­si­tion now, or ever, to sat­is­fy this al­ready bur­geon­ing de­mand which shows no sign of de­creas­ing in the near fu­ture.

“That sit­u­a­tion clear­ly speaks to an over­whelm­ing de­mand for hous­ing which, as ad­mirably as we are do­ing, we can­not re­al­is­ti­cal­ly sat­is­fy.”