Rhon­dor Dowlat

Can­cer sur­vivor Mar­garet Flem­ming has been wait­ing 42 years for a home from the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) and yes­ter­day was her lucky day.Flem­ming, 68, of St James, was one of 100 peo­ple, who were in­vit­ed for the lat­est ran­dom draw, which took place at the HDC head of­fice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day. They have been wait­ing for more than 15 years for an HDC house to call their own.

Out of that 100 in­vi­tees, 20 of them, in­clud­ing Flem­ming, were for­tu­nate to have been se­lect­ed in the ran­dom draw out of 500.Iron­i­cal­ly, Flem­ming was called on to start the com­put­erised ran­dom hous­ing draw and when she saw her name ap­pear­ing on the screen, along with her ref­er­ence num­ber and the pe­ri­od of wait time, she broke down in tears.

Speak­ing to re­porters af­ter the cer­e­mo­ny, Flem­ming shared her ex­pe­ri­ence which oc­curred on Mon­day morn­ing."I got up with a song on Mon­day morn­ing, which goes like this (start­ed singing): 'My home, my home, this is the home of the Lord, just come in my house, my house.'"That is the song I got up with on Mon­day morn­ing and about 11 am that same day, I got a call from HDC stat­ing to come here to­day (yes­ter­day). This is not of man's will but of God's will and I give him all the glo­ry and ho­n­our," Flem­ming said.

Cry­ing un­con­trol­lably, she added: "I am blessed. I feel hap­py. This is over­whelm­ing joy and these are tears of joy. I know my God would not have failed me."Flem­ming said one of her daugh­ters had been wait­ing for a home from the HDC for more than 20 years and hoped she too would one day ex­pe­ri­ence the joy of be­ing grant­ed her own home.

An­oth­er lucky home­own­er, Floris­sa Bobb, 71, of Mara­bel­la, said she ap­plied for a house in 1983.When her name too ap­peared on the screen as one of the ran­dom suc­cess­ful ap­pli­cants, Bobb threw her hands in the air and be­gan to shout prais­es to God.She was brought to the front and seat­ed next to Hous­ing Min­is­ter, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, who hugged and con­grat­u­lat­ed both of them.

Some suc­cess­ful ap­pli­cants have been wait­ing for 34, 38, 43 and 20 years for an HDC house.Mooni­lal de­scribed the ran­dom draw and his in­ter­ac­tions with some of the suc­cess­ful ap­pli­cants as a "very emo­tion­al day and one of the hap­pi­est mo­ments for him since his ap­point­ment as Hous­ing Min­is­ter.

"Some of these peo­ple have ap­plied for homes when I was in pri­ma­ry school and I am hap­py that I was able to meet with them and share with them in this good news," he added.The names of the 500 peo­ple se­lect­ed in the ran­dom draw will be pub­lished on Sun­day.