SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

New­ly-ap­point­ed Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) chair­man Noel Gar­cia says of the 13,265 home­own­ers and renters on the cor­po­ra­tion’s data­base, on­ly 192 have so far ap­plied for a two-month de­fer­ral of pay­ments to­wards their homes dur­ing the COVID-19 cri­sis.

The de­fer­ral of pay­ments the HDC will have to un­der­take based on the cur­rent ap­pli­ca­tions is still mi­nus­cule com­pared to the $45 mil­lion it is cur­rent­ly owed by its delin­quent clients.

Gar­cia gave a break­down of the fig­ures dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia last week.

The HDC of­fered a two-month de­fer­ral/mora­to­ri­um on pay­ments for mort­gage, rental, rent to own and li­cense to oc­cu­py clients on its web­site on March 24, soon af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced a swath of mea­sures to help cit­i­zens go­ing through the harsh fi­nan­cial chal­lenges some may now be ex­pe­ri­enc­ing due to the forced shut­down of busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The de­fer­rals, so far on­ly for March and April, were im­ple­ment­ed by both the HDC and the T&T Mort­gage Fi­nance com­pa­ny, both agen­cies, af­ter Row­ley promised to bring fi­nan­cial re­lief to cit­i­zens on the low­er end of the earn­ing scale as the Gov­ern­ment was forced to shut down non-es­sen­tial busi­ness­es to avoid the spread of the con­ta­gious dis­ease.

“Un­der­stand peo­ple, if you owe the mon­ey and you can pay, pay it! This should be a ben­e­fit on­ly to those who can­not pay. If you could pay it (rent/ mort­gage) now, pay it. It is for those who can­not pay we are try­ing to pro­vide that re­lief,” Row­ley said at a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing de­tail­ing the mea­sure last month.

Asked how many of HDC’s clients had since re­quest­ed a pay­ment de­fer­ral, Gar­cia said their records showed 192 clients emailed or dropped off let­ters at their Port-of-Spain of­fice ask­ing for the re­lief.

He said the de­fer­ral re­quests have been small when tak­ing in­to ac­count they had 13,265 clients in their data­base who are billed month­ly.

Gar­cia could not, how­ev­er, in­di­cate how much the HDC would de­fer in pay­ment from the 192 clients not pay­ing. But he said that if a client has a ten-year mort­gage and re­quest­ed the two-month de­fer­ral, their re­pay­ment will now be over ten years and two months. Ba­si­cal­ly, he said it would seem the ma­jor­i­ty of their clients have opt­ed not to have their pay­ments ex­tend­ed giv­en the coun­try’s chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tion.

“It is im­por­tant to note that this is a de­fer­ral and not a waiv­er. Clients in rental and li­cence to oc­cu­py or oth­er sim­i­lar arrange­ments are ex­pect­ed to make their pay­ments once their fi­nan­cial po­si­tion has im­proved or when they are in a po­si­tion to do so. This can be done in a lump sum or in par­tial pay­ments,” Gar­cia told Guardian Me­dia.

Asked if the de­fer­ral of pay­ments would af­fect the HDC’s op­er­a­tions in any way, Gar­cia said, “The HDC re­lies on funds re­ceived from mort­gages, rentals, li­cense to oc­cu­py, mort­gage con­ver­sions and sales of units to im­ple­ment its ag­gres­sive hous­ing con­struc­tion pro­gramme.

“There­fore, the de­fer­ral may im­pact the time­ly com­ple­tion of some of the HDC’s fund­ed pro­grammes and our abil­i­ty to clear out­stand­ing debts.”

Gar­cia said they al­so ex­pect the clients who ap­plied for the help to ho­n­our their fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions as well.

“While the HDC is sym­pa­thet­ic to per­sons who may have lost their jobs due to this cri­sis or are cur­rent­ly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties, the Gov­ern­ment has im­ple­ment­ed cer­tain mea­sures to as­sist cit­i­zens at this time.

“There­fore, the HDC ex­pects that when our clients’ fi­nan­cial po­si­tions have im­proved they will ho­n­our their fi­nan­cial com­mit­ment or would have met with the HDC’s Re­cov­er­ies De­part­ment to fi­nalise a suit­able pay­ment plan,” he said.

Gar­cia point­ed out that clients who are not in good stand­ings or owe the HDC would not qual­i­fy for the de­fer­ral. He said 2,800 of its clients are cur­rent­ly list­ed as delin­quent pay­ers.

Asked how much the HDC is owed by delin­quent clients, Gar­cia said as of Feb­ru­ary this year, the HDC is owed $45 mil­lion in rent.

“This amount rep­re­sents bal­ances out­stand­ing on the HDC records for sev­er­al years,” he said.

“The delin­quen­cy list varies, as ar­rears are some­times cleared by cus­tomers and then new ar­rears are gen­er­at­ed due to non-pay­ment. The av­er­age is around 3,000 cus­tomers in any giv­en month.”

Asked if the HDC’s ar­rears have been de­creas­ing, Gar­cia said yes, not­ing that the delin­quen­cy tends to be sea­son­al and is high­est around the Christ­mas and Car­ni­val pe­ri­od.

“Cus­tomers who be­come delin­quent of­ten do so due to an in­abil­i­ty to pay rather than an un­will­ing­ness,” he re­vealed.

With un­em­ploy­ment in­creas­ing dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Gar­cia ad­mit­ted there is a pos­si­bil­i­ty that the HDC’s ar­rears may in­crease.

“How­ev­er, if we use the re­quest for de­fer­rals as a guide the ar­rears amount may not in­crease great­ly.”

In 2018, Gar­cia said the HDC set up a de­part­ment specif­i­cal­ly to re­cov­er pay­ments owed by delin­quent clients. HDC has al­so been pub­lish­ing the names of clients who re­li­gious­ly dodge pay­ments.

“A debt col­lec­tion ve­hi­cle would al­so vis­it clients at their homes who claim ig­no­rance of non-re­ceipt of of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence, while the ser­vices of ex­ter­nal debt col­lec­tion agen­cies are al­so pro­cured to cor­rob­o­rate the ef­forts by the HDC’s in­ter­nal Re­cov­er­ies De­part­ment.”

While the Gov­ern­ment has al­so put a halt on all con­struc­tion work deemed non-es­sen­tial dur­ing the COVID re­sponse, Gar­cia said the HDC has not been “un­du­ly im­pact­ed” by this move.

He said 41 con­trac­tors work­ing on 18 hous­ing projects across the coun­try have been af­fect­ed by the Stay-at-Home or­der.

Some of the projects that had to be halt­ed were Eden Gar­dens, Ma­hogany Court, Re­al Spring, Cy­press Hill, Lake­view and Har­mo­ny Hall.

How­ev­er, he said the HDC has ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,500 hous­es in ad­vanced stages of com­ple­tion. In the last 15 months, he said 1,450 fam­i­lies and in­di­vid­u­als had been re­cip­i­ents of HDC homes.

Gar­cia said the HDC’s biggest chal­lenge was still fund­ing.

“Fund­ing will al­ways be a chal­lenge, par­tic­u­lar­ly for or­gan­i­sa­tions like us whose man­date di­rect­ly im­pacts the liveli­hood of cit­i­zens,” he said.

Like most en­ti­ties, Gar­cia said the HDC will al­ways be de­sirous of more funds to be able to as­sist a greater num­ber of cit­i­zens. How­ev­er, he said the HDC is cog­nisant of the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic cli­mate and com­pet­ing needs at this time.