Cus­tomers at the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) may no longer have to leave the con­ve­nience of their home to pay their rent or mort­gage.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion plans to make mo­bile linx ma­chines avail­able as one of its many ini­tia­tives not on­ly to rev­o­lu­tionise how it con­ducts its busi­ness but to im­prove debt col­lec­tion.

In a wide-rang­ing in­ter­view Jay­selle Mc­Far­lane, who was ap­point­ed as Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of HDC in April the last year, shared some de­tails with the Busi­ness Guardian about the com­pa­ny’s of­fer­ings in­clud­ing its “More Ways to Pay” ex­pect­ed to be launched by next month.

“We have to ei­ther co­erce you to pay or we have to pro­vide more ways for you to pay and the first launch is the More Ways To Pay.

“We will be the first Gov­ern­ment agency us­ing a plat­form from TTIFC (T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre),” Mc­Far­lane said, not­ing there’s al­so the tra­di­tion­al Sure­Pay op­tion as well as the on­line pay­ment ser­vice for cus­tomers.

In Ju­ly, Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said more than $1 bil­lion is owed to the HDC as of June 22 by delin­quent cus­tomers.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter delin­quent rent-to-own, lease-to-own, rental, and mort­gage own­ers have stymied the ac­cel­er­at­ing hou­sing pro­gramme.

“The num­ber stood at one bil­li­on, 12 mil­lion-plus ($1.1 bil­li­on-plus), a delin­quen­cy ra­tio of 40 per cent. Al­so, the amount that the HDC owes its con­trac­tors and sup­pli­ers is one bil­lion, three mil­lion plus ($1.3 bil­li­on-plus).

“Can you un­der­stand that if our own­ers will pay their mort­gages, rentals, rent to own and lease to own, we would be able to pay off these con­trac­tors and sup­pli­ers who have worked so hard,” she added.

Ac­cord­ing to Mc­Far­lane for those who bla­tant­ly refuse to pay their dues, the HDC will be clamp­ing down.

“But for those who can pay we are mak­ing it a lot more con­ve­nient. For those who don’t want to pay we have to find an­oth­er mech­a­nism to make you pay.

“We al­so know there’s a so­cial el­e­ment to the HDC we have to keep in the back­ground. We have to pro­vide hous­ing for those who can­not af­ford it nor­mal­ly. As much we would like to strong-arm some peo­ple in some in­stances it’s not avail­able,” Mc­Far­lane said.

How­ev­er, she em­pha­sised il­le­gal oc­cu­pants will not be af­ford­ed the lux­u­ry of be­ing “co­erced.”

And with thou­sands of units to man­age, the com­pa­ny with the help of the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) is al­so im­prov­ing its tech­nol­o­gy.

“It starts with hav­ing ef­fi­cient soft­ware to man­age over 12,000 units.

“The first thing the HDC need­ed to do is to have a soft­ware that can man­age that mul­ti­tude of prop­er­ties. The IDB pro­vid­ed us with the fi­nanc­ing to up­grade to Yar­di 7S. Cur­rent­ly we have a steer­ing com­mit­tee and an im­ple­men­ta­tion team that is work­ing on that,” Mc­Far­lane said.

This will be com­plet­ed in Jan­u­ary of next year.

Mc­Far­lane, a char­tered ac­coun­tant by pro­fes­sion who has ex­per­tise in oth­er ar­eas in­clud­ing con­struc­tion said she took up the po­si­tion be­cause she want­ed to add val­ue to the HDC.

Dur­ing her first year Mc­Far­lane said she worked with her man­agers to en­sure cer­tain el­e­ments were im­ple­ment­ed in­clud­ing ICT work, im­proved cus­tomer ser­vice ini­tia­tives for con­struc­tion and al­so build­ing team­work.

Re­gard­ing some of the sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges she had to over­come thus far, Mc­Far­lane said this en­tailed meet­ing cus­tomers’ ex­pec­ta­tions in­clud­ing con­tin­ued main­te­nance of de­vel­op­ments.

Busi­ness process re­or­gan­is­ing was an­oth­er fac­tor she tack­led.

This, Mc­Far­lane said, in­clud­ed chang­ing the way the busi­ness is done at the HDC to in­clude more ICT el­e­ments and striv­ing to en­sure the HDC was one co­he­sive unit as op­posed to de­part­ments op­er­at­ing in si­los.

Delv­ing deep­er in­to the con­struc­tion as­pect, Mc­Far­lane said the com­pa­ny took a fresh ap­proach.

“We have start­ed to work the con­struc­tion back­wards. Hav­ing re­gard to the com­plaints we have from home­own­ers and look­ing at how we can per­haps, change some of the el­e­ments of con­struc­tion to have more cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion and im­prove on the qual­i­ty in some in­stances where it can be im­proved,” Mc­Far­lane ex­plained.

COVID was an­oth­er ob­sta­cle which not on­ly im­pact­ed the com­ple­tion of con­struc­tion but re­sult­ed in ad­di­tion­al costs.

Cus­tomers how­ev­er, Mc­Far­lane ex­pect­ed cost to re­main the same be­cause HDC en­tered in­to a sale agree­ments at a par­tic­u­lar price.

“And so whilst our price has es­ca­lat­ed, we are be­tween a rock and a hard stone as to whether we can pass on some of those costs to our cus­tomers and whether we can be sub­sidised by the Gov­ern­ment for the oth­er half that isn’t passed on to the cus­tomers,” she added.

And like in any en­ti­ty, fi­nance can be a con­straint.

Ac­cord­ing to Mc­Far­lane one of HDC’s biggest chal­lenges was to work with­in that re­mit in meet­ing oblig­a­tions to sup­pli­ers, try­ing to en­sure home­own­ers meet their oblig­a­tions as well as hav­ing a bal­ance be­tween both.

In Au­gust, Robin­son-Reg­is an­nounced the HDC will un­der­go an or­gan­i­sa­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion which will see the es­tab­lish­ment of three sub­sidiary com­pa­nies.

She not­ed for HDC to thrive and ful­fil its man­date, it needs to re-en­gi­neer its iden­ti­ty, fi­nanc­ing mod­el and op­er­a­tional struc­ture.

The HDC Con­struc­tion Co Ltd will man­age prop­er­ty de­vel­op­ment, in­clud­ing land ac­qui­si­tion, ur­ban plan­ning and project and con­struc­tion man­age­ment. It will al­so pro­vide fi­nanc­ing so­lu­tions for projects.

The HDC Fa­cil­i­ties Es­tate Man­age­ment Co Ltd will han­dle prop­er­ty man­age­ment, in­clud­ing the main­te­nance of rental units and pro­vide ad­min­is­tra­tion for the man­age­ment com­pa­ny port­fo­lio. It will al­so part­ner with re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions and ex­ter­nal en­ti­ties for the up­keep of com­mu­ni­ties.

And the HDC As­set Man­age­ment Co Ltd will be re­spon­si­ble for com­plet­ing the sale of the fin­ished hous­ing units and pro­vid­ing ad­min­is­tra­tive sup­port for hous­ing de­vel­op­ments un­der its purview un­til they are hand­ed over to pur­chasers.

Ac­cord­ing to Mc­Far­lane the com­pa­nies have al­ready been formed and are ex­pect­ed to be launched soon.

Bud­get ex­pec­ta­tions

With the fis­cal pack­age to be un­veiled in one week, Mc­Far­lane said the HDC’s so­cial hous­ing pro­gramme will re­quire over $1B.

That pro­gramme will cov­er ar­eas like Beetham Gar­dens, Al­mond Court, Todds Street and The Tow­ers.

There are al­so oth­er works to be done like elec­tri­cal, land de­vel­op­ment and drainage among oth­ers which will al­so re­quire funds.

“It’s quite a tidy sum. We are an ex­pen­sive min­istry. We have over 191,000 per­sons on the data­base await­ing hous­ing and to sat­is­fy that in­sa­tiable de­mand we do re­quire a lot but let’s see what we can get,” she ex­plained, main­tain­ing that the com­pa­ny’s man­date is to pro­vide af­ford­able hous­ing to cit­i­zens.

Ac­cord­ing to Mc­Far­lane while $8 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed last year Gov­ern­ment has pro­vid­ed a lot more fund­ing en­abling more pro­grammes and projects to be com­plet­ed.

Mc­Far­lane al­so wants Gov­ern­ment to con­tin­ue the Hous­ing Con­struc­tion In­cen­tive Pro­gramme (HCIP).

“Maybe to re­vamp it to an ex­tent be­cause it is some­thing we see would gen­er­ate a lot of con­struc­tion and homes and it is some­thing that is not be­ing utilised cur­rent­ly,” she added.

In 2018 the HDC sought to re­duce the bur­den on the State in pro­vid­ing low cost pub­lic hous­ing by get­ting the pri­vate sec­tor in­volved through a num­ber of hous­ing ini­tia­tives—name­ly the Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ship (PPP) and the HCIP.

Un­der the HCIP, a cash or land in­cen­tive is avail­able to suc­cess­ful par­tic­i­pants of the pro­gramme.