Charles Kong Soo

Hous­ing Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell says Gov­ern­ment has made hous­ing more af­ford­able to low and mid­dle-in­come fam­i­lies un­like the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment which catered for high-in­come earn­ers.

He was speak­ing at a key dis­tri­b­u­tion cer­e­mo­ny for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 180 new Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) home own­ers, many with young chil­dren at the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza, Rich­mond Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

"We re­turned the ap­proved ceil­ing from $45,000 to $25,000. In so do­ing, we en­sured that we main­tained our leg­isla­tive man­date to pro­vide for low and mid­dle in­come earn­ing fam­i­lies and not the high-in­come earn­ers that the last ad­min­is­tra­tion at­tempt­ed to cater for," Mitchell said.

"Now, low to mid­dle-in­come earn­ing fam­i­lies will no longer be left be­hind. We made the af­ford­able mort­gage pro­grammes of­fered by the T&T Mort­gage Fi­nance Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (TTMF) even more af­ford­able by re­vis­ing the mort­gage-fi­nanc­ing regime," he said.

Mitchell said the qual­i­fy­ing in­come of peo­ple el­i­gi­ble for the two per cent in­ter­est rate had moved now from $10,000 to $14,000 and they can now ac­cess prop­er­ties val­ued be­tween $850,000 and $1 mil­lion.

Those earn­ing be­tween $14,001 to $30,000 can now ben­e­fit from a five per cent in­ter­est rate and can ac­cess prop­er­ties val­ued be­tween $1 mil­lion and $1.5 mil­lion, he said.

Mitchell said since as­sum­ing of­fice, the min­istry re­turned the HDC to its orig­i­nal moor­ings, which was to con­struct af­ford­able hous­ing for de­serv­ing ap­pli­cants.

Mitchell said the av­er­age price of an HDC unit will re­turn to a more af­ford­able $450,000 to $500,000, down from $900,000 to $1.3 mil­lion in the last ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The min­istry's Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Si­mone Thorne-Mo­ra said while the min­istry was aware that it was the sea­son of good­will, she re­mind­ed the new home­own­ers that be­ing al­lo­cat­ed a Gov­ern­ment-sub­sidised home from the HDC was not a free gift.

She said they had a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ho­n­our their com­mit­ments, pay their bills ,and ful­fil the re­quire­ments that were stat­ed in their guide­lines and reg­u­la­tions.

Si­mone Thorne-Mo­ra said by do­ing this they can help oth­ers who were de­sirous of home own­er­ship.

Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez said the Cor­po­ra­tion was com­mit­ted to de­liv­er ser­vices, de­vel­op new and ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture in the city, and pro­vid­ing sup­port at every lev­el with all stake­hold­ers and gov­ern­ment agen­cies.