Lee An­na Ma­haraj

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

Peo­ple il­le­gal­ly oc­cu­py­ing prop­er­ty owned by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) can be fined $100,000 or jailed for 15 years. This was the warn­ing yes­ter­day from the HDC’s Di­vi­sion Man­ag­er of Cor­po­rate Ser­vices, Je­re­my Camp­bell.

At the launch of a new pub­lic aware­ness cam­paign, It’s Not Yours, Camp­bell said there has been an in­crease in per­sons’ mov­ing il­le­gal­ly in­to units.

“It’s al­so a fact that per­sons are sub­let­ting their prop­er­ties. By sub­let­ting your prop­er­ty, it’s al­so not yours, you’re liv­ing in a prop­er­ty that’s owned by some­one, the HDC does know who you are, so when we do our ver­i­fi­ca­tion sur­veys, we won’t know ex­act­ly who you are and you are deemed as il­le­gal,” he said.

The It’s Not Yours cam­paign is de­signed to in­form the pub­lic of the cor­rect method to ap­ply for an HDC home, as well as warn peo­ple that when they sub­let their prop­er­ties and are found out, they will be re­port­ed to the TTPS.

Camp­bell ex­plained: “If per­sons move in il­le­gal­ly, the Tres­pass­ing Act will take prece­dence. That will ba­si­cal­ly have you in jail for 15 years, or a $100,000 fine, so the per­sons who are do­ing these il­le­gal acts need to re­al­ly con­firm what they want in life.

“You want to be home in an il­le­gal house with your fam­i­ly, or you want to be in jail for 15 years? It’s re­al­ly a per­son­al de­ci­sion that they need to make. But we at the HDC are not in the busi­ness of throw­ing per­sons out of homes, we want to help per­sons and pro­vide safe and af­ford­able hous­ing,” he added.

He urged those who are il­le­gal­ly oc­cu­py­ing HDC hous­es or apart­ments: “Come to us, let’s have a con­ver­sa­tion be­fore we go out and do the ver­i­fi­ca­tion sur­vey and then we re­alise that you are there il­le­gal­ly. By that time, it may be too late, be­cause we have to fol­low the law.

“Once you break in­to a prop­er­ty, any­one’s prop­er­ty, it is il­le­gal. If you are in an HDC prop­er­ty, come to us, have a con­ver­sa­tion with us, and we can then di­rect you to dif­fer­ent min­istries or what­ev­er might be need­ed to as­sist you.”

He al­so re­mind­ed peo­ple to seek ap­proval be­fore ex­tend­ing their HDC prop­er­ty and urged the pub­lic to re­port il­le­gal cas­es so they can be dealt with ac­cord­ing­ly.

More in­for­ma­tion about the cam­paign can be found on the HDC’s web­site and so­cial me­dia pages.