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Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Over 19,000 apply for Housing Ministry's home repair grants

by

Carisa Lee
965 days ago
20220706
Ministry of Housing and Urban Development

Ministry of Housing and Urban Development

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

Twen­ty-five peo­ple can now start re­pair­ing their homes af­ter they re­ceived mon­ey from the Gov­ern­ment to do so.

Through the Min­istry of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Hous­ing Im­prove­ment Grant Pro­gramme, each home­own­er re­ceived $15,000 on Wednes­day.

“When a home is in need of re­pair and home­own­ers can’t af­ford it the home­own­er can be left with a feel­ing of en­trap­ment and anx­i­ety…Through this grant we are tak­ing im­me­di­ate ac­tion to re­lieve home­own­ers,” Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Adri­an Leonce said.

A to­tal of 122 peo­ple had their ap­pli­ca­tions ap­proved but all could not at­tend the cer­e­mo­ny be­cause of the pan­dem­ic.

Leonce said that cost $1.5 mil­lion and his min­istry plans to spend an­oth­er $2.5 mil­lion (4 mil­lion dol­lars to­tal) on the pro­gramme.

“It is im­por­tant that you un­der­stand that not every­one who ap­plied for this grant will re­ceive it, there are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 19,223 ap­pli­cants on the min­istry hous­ing data­base so just imag­ine that,” he said.

The mon­ey can be used for roof and ceil­ing re­pairs, elec­tri­cal works, plumb­ing, im­proved fa­cil­i­ties for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, ad­di­tion­al up­grades and adap­tion of space to ease over­crowd­ing, and re­place­ment of floors, doors, and cup­boards.

“Oth­er works deemed crit­i­cal in main­tain­ing the in­tegri­ty of your home struc­ture,” he said.

Leonce said grants were giv­en to peo­ple from nu­mer­ous com­mu­ni­ties across Trinidad and To­ba­go,

“The grants we are giv­ing to­day will ben­e­fit fam­i­lies from Curepe to Ch­agua­nas, in­clu­sive of Laven­tille, Barataria, Bel­mont and East Dry Riv­er, Pe­tit Val­ley, and Diego Mar­tin,” he said.

Leonce plead­ed with ben­e­fi­cia­ries to use the mon­ey to do what it was in­tend­ed for so the pro­gramme can con­tin­ue and the over 19 thou­sand oth­er ap­pli­cants wait­ing can ben­e­fit as well.

“I’m pleased and I’m proud that the Min­istry of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment is help­ing so many of our cit­i­zens to de­fray the cost of their home im­prove­ment,” he said.

Leonce said this grant will cre­ate an eco­nom­ic rip­ple ef­fect through­out com­mu­ni­ties as it will help trades­men and women, small busi­ness­es and lo­cal hard­ware stores.

“As you know this ad­min­is­tra­tion has been work­ing on every front to find so­lu­tions to ad­dress the is­sues fac­ing the most vul­ner­a­ble in so­ci­ety,” he said.

The Min­is­ter said the Gov­ern­ment is mak­ing eq­ui­ty and em­pa­thy cen­tral to its gov­er­nance.


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