JESSIE-MAY VEN­TOUR

Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment, Pene­lope Beck­les has con­firmed a probe is un­der­way to de­ter­mine if any mem­ber of staff at the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion was in­volved in any of the re­cent hous­ing scams.

“Since I have be­come min­is­ter, I have re­ceived a lot of com­plaints,” she re­vealed, “and the most painful thing for me is that many of the com­plaints come from sin­gle moth­ers—peo­ple who have worked so hard and sac­ri­ficed, and bor­rowed this mon­ey.”

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew, the min­is­ter said to date, per­sons fleeced by the scam­mers have been promised a site vis­it to their prospec­tive hous­es which caused them to trust the fraud­sters.

She said many vic­tims have been di­rect­ed to pay down-pay­ment mon­ey to every­where else but the HDC, in­clud­ing at a spe­cial web­site or to a spe­cial bank ac­count, all of which should set off warn­ing bells.

“The on­ly per­son you should be pay­ing your mon­ey to is di­rect­ly to the HDC and not any­one who calls you on the phone on a Sat­ur­day or a Sun­day morn­ing.”

As to whether the so­phis­ti­ca­tion of the hous­ing scams is a clue that ac­tu­al HDC staffers may be in­volved, Min­is­ter Beck­les said, “I can­not say with any mea­sure of con­vic­tion that there are peo­ple from with­in the HDC who are do­ing it. I can­not say that, be­cause we are do­ing our in­ves­ti­ga­tions.”

Min­is­ter Beck­les al­so ad­dressed the is­sue of the lot­tery sys­tem em­ployed to al­lo­cate hous­ing units. She ad­mits to be­ing dis­sat­is­fied with it and ex­press­es a de­sire to see it changed.

“While the in­ten­tion may be to en­sure jus­tice ex­ists in the hous­ing sec­tor, in some cas­es it could very well end up be­ing a sys­tem where peo­ple would say that it caus­es in­jus­tice,” the Min­is­ter said.

“As I un­der­stand it, part of the rea­son for that pro­ce­dure is that peo­ple felt the need for a fair and just sys­tem of al­lo­ca­tion,” she not­ed.

“My con­cern is how to bal­ance every­thing out for those who have been wait­ing for decades in the sys­tem, against those who have on­ly re­cent­ly been en­tered in­to it.”