Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is ap­peal­ing to the pri­vate sec­tor to col­lab­o­rate with the Gov­ern­ment in more pri­vate-pub­lic part­ner­ships (PPP) to pro­vide af­ford­able homes to cit­i­zens of T&T.

Speak­ing at the sod turn­ing for one such project, City Heights, in Co­coyea, San Fer­nan­do, yes­ter­day, Row­ley said there are cur­rent­ly 191,000 peo­ple await­ing homes from the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC). He said such part­ner­ships will al­low an­oth­er op­tion for cit­i­zens, eas­ing the de­mand on the HDC.

“That is on­ly hap­pen­ing be­cause the HDC is be­ing seen as the on­ly op­por­tu­ni­ty for most peo­ple to get a house, es­pe­cial­ly new fam­i­lies who are just start­ing out and would like to get their first unit with­in the mea­sure of their in­come,” the Prime Min­is­ter said.

“But with the pri­vate sec­tor, with Gov­ern­ment’s as­sis­tance and in­volve­ment, get­ting in­volved and build­ing hous­es- two bed­rooms as men­tioned with all the ameni­ties for $1.2 mil­lion and three bed­rooms full fam­i­ly units for $1.5 mil­lion- that is im­mi­nent­ly af­ford­able to the mid­dle-class peo­ple who are on the list of the HDC.”

An artist’s impression of the City Heights Development.

OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER

He said this will al­low the HDC to redi­rect those on their list who could af­ford to pur­chase the pri­vate­ly built homes.

He said the de­mand for hous­ing on the HDC is not one it could meet in any short or medi­um term be­cause at its peak, it was on­ly able to con­struct around 4,000 homes in a year. At that rate, the PM said it will take over 47 years for homes to be built to ac­com­mo­date those cur­rent­ly on the HDC wait­ing list. He said if even 10,000 on the list could af­ford a pri­vate­ly built home, it presents a mar­ket that can be im­me­di­ate­ly cap­i­talised on.

City Heights will be a res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ty of 90 apart­ments di­vid­ed in­to three six-sto­ry build­ings.

It will have two and three-bed­room apart­ments with two bath­rooms each, park­ing, en­ter­tain­ment ar­eas, such as a pool, and oth­er so­cial ar­eas. The com­mu­ni­ty will be gat­ed with 24-hour sur­veil­lance.

The pre-sales of this res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ty will be­gin in No­vem­ber and the con­struc­tion of the de­vel­op­ment will be­gin in Jan­u­ary 2023. The du­ra­tion of con­struc­tion will be 30 months, with units ready to be­gin de­liv­ery in the 24th month.

Prices for res­i­dences will start at $1.2 mil­lion for two-bed­room apart­ments and $1.5 mil­lion for three-bed­room apart­ments. It will be built by the Fur­ness Group of Com­pa­nies.