Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Prospec­tive home­own­ers may breathe a sigh of re­lief in the up­com­ing months, as Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing to sub­sidise hous­ing fur­ther. How af­ford­able? Min­is­ter of Hous­ing Dr Rood­lal Mooni­lal is un­able to say, but is as­sur­ing that the rec­om­men­da­tion will be tak­en to Cab­i­net be­fore the end of next month. The move, ac­cord­ing to Mooni­lal, is a two-fold ini­tia­tive geared to­wards de­creas­ing the cost price of re­fur­bished homes and to al­so re­duce the back­log of names on the wait­ing list. In an in­ter­view with Sun­day Guardian last week at the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, Mooni­lal said while a hold was placed on the dis­tri­b­u­tion of hous­es be­cause of de­fects in some of the projects, 100,000-plus ap­pli­cants were on the data­base of the sys­tem which he ex­pect­ed to re­duce in the next three months.

"What we have no­ticed is that the high costs of sev­er­al of the homes are out­side of the reach of the av­er­age per­son. "Some peo­ple sim­ply can­not af­ford the mar­ket val­ue of the homes. As a re­sult, Gov­ern­ment is look­ing to pro­vide a fur­ther sub­sidy to as­sist with the pur­chas­ing of homes. "I in­tend to take a pro­pos­al to Cab­i­net to con­sid­er the price re­duc­tion of the hous­ing units." Sun­day Guardian learnt that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10,000 homes, in­clud­ing de­fec­tive units, are un­oc­cu­pied. Un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion, a two per cent mort­gage rate was in­tro­duced for ap­pli­cants earn­ing a month­ly in­come be­low $8,000 and seek­ing to pur­chase a hous­ing unit not ex­ceed­ing $450,000.

How­ev­er, Mooni­lal point­ed out, while the sub­sidy was im­ple­ment­ed to as­sist ap­pli­cants pur­chas­ing homes, they were still fac­ing chal­lenges to qual­i­fy for a sub­stan­tial mort­gage. He ex­plained that some ap­pli­cants were qual­i­fy­ing for mort­gages of $250,000, but the cost of the hous­ing units was al­most tripled. "There are homes where per­sons may qual­i­fy for a $250,000 mort­gage, but the unit is $750,000; so even if we pro­vide a sub­sidy and get the ap­pli­cant to $350,000 house val­ue, we are still deal­ing with over a $300,000 sub­sidy on every home. "The pric­ing of homes is ur­gent­ly on the agen­da to be re­viewed. We are sug­gest­ing fur­ther sub­si­dis­ing, es­pe­cial­ly on the homes that are de­fec­tive, to en­sure that it be­comes with­in the reach of the av­er­age per­son."

Spe­cial at­ten­tion for emer­gency cas­es

And while the min­is­ter is propos­ing to bring cheap­er hous­ing for all, he vowed that pri­or­i­ty would be giv­en to "spe­cial cas­es." These cas­es, Mooni­lal said, would in­clude do­mes­tic cas­es and sit­u­a­tions in­volv­ing chil­dren who were be­ing phys­i­cal­ly and sex­u­al­ly-abused. In ad­di­tion, the min­is­ter said spe­cial at­ten­tion would be giv­en to peo­ple who lost their homes in un­for­tu­nate cir­cum­stances. "We are com­mit­ted to get­ting in­volved in these emer­gency cas­es; some of them which in­volve dis­putes be­tween spous­es and cas­es where chil­dren are be­ing mo­lest­ed. "These cas­es are go­ing to be treat­ed with ur­gency. In many of these cas­es, the vic­tims are still in these abused homes; and if I may add, they have not gone on State lands to erect il­le­gal struc­tures. "We are go­ing to see how best we could as­sist in mat­ters like these."

Work to re­sume at Cleaver Heights

Asked what plans were on stream for the con­tro­ver­sial Cleaver Heights projects, Mooni­lal said he in­tend­ed to tour the site in the next two weeks with a team to as­sess the con­struc­tion works. He stressed, how­ev­er, that the project would con­tin­ue to en­sure that there would not be any fur­ther de­lay in de­liv­ery of homes and loss of em­ploy­ment. How­ev­er, the min­is­ter added that he would en­sure that the ac­count­ing de­part­ment, to­geth­er with oth­ers at the min­istry, is strength­ened to avoid a sim­i­lar "$10-mil­lion er­ror." For­mer prime min­is­ter, Patrick Man­ning had ques­tioned Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Row­ley, call­ing on him to ac­count for the dis­crep­an­cy in the cost of the project. The al­le­ga­tion was raised by for­mer Hous­ing Min­is­ter, Emi­ly Gaynor Dick-Forde, but was lat­er dis­pelled by the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry that sug­gest­ed an ac­count­ing er­ror was re­spon­si­ble for the dis­crep­an­cy.