PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Don­na Cox says the Min­istry of Hous­ing will be ap­proached to pro­vide tran­si­tion­al hous­ing to the home­less.

This was among one of the pro­pos­als put for­ward dur­ing a stake­hold­er meet­ing geared to­wards ad­dress­ing the num­ber of street dwellers across the coun­try at Ca­bil­do Cham­bers, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

The pro­pos­al will de­pend on a men­tal health as­sess­ment that will iden­ti­fy if a so­cial­ly-dis­placed in­di­vid­ual re­quires health care or sim­ple so­cial re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

“An as­sess­ment must take place and we are now in the process of try­ing to have an as­sess­ment cen­tre. The Min­istry of Hous­ing is al­so sup­posed to as­sist us with tran­si­tion­al homes be­cause there are per­sons who re­al­ly have nowhere to live and we need to take them off the street,” Cox said dur­ing the event.

Cox said they had iden­ti­fied a po­ten­tial lo­ca­tion for an as­sess­ment cen­tre at the cor­ner of Dun­can Street and South Quay, which would gauge if the so­cial­ly-dis­placed re­quired men­tal care or re­lo­ca­tion.

How­ev­er, the stake­hold­er group still re­quires le­gal ad­vice con­cern­ing the way for­ward.

“I am hop­ing that in a month’s time we should have the le­gal in­for­ma­tion but we are not wait­ing with the ar­eas that we have to, for ex­am­ple in a week’s time the let­ters would be go­ing out to Min­is­ter of Hous­ing con­cern­ing the tran­si­tion, Min­istry of Plan­ning con­cern­ing the as­sess­ment cen­tre that we have been wait­ing on so that they would not be redi­rect­ed to some oth­er area so we are gonna ask,” she said.

She stressed, how­ev­er, that the homes would not be per­ma­nent for the so­cial­ly-dis­placed, as they would be look­ing at three to six-month pe­ri­ods dur­ing which time the oc­cu­pants would be en­cour­aged to get back on their feet.

The meet­ing in­volved var­i­ous stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram, Coun­cil­lor Ryaad Ho­sein of the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion and Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion rep­re­sen­ta­tive An­tho­ny Sal­loum.

Most of the par­tic­i­pants ex­pressed be­lief that the dis­cus­sion was pos­i­tive.

“We are on our way, the meet­ing was very in­struc­tive, we utilised all that we have learned. All the com­mu­ni­ca­tion that would have tak­en place in the past and I feel com­fort­able as the may­or of Port-of-Spain to say that we will deal with the home­less sit­u­a­tion in a very con­struc­tive, pro­gres­sive and a man­ner in which will be very hu­mane and we will come to a con­clu­sion that with­in the very near fu­ture the hope of the home­less be ad­dressed,” Mar­tinez said of the ini­tia­tive.

The group is set to meet again next month af­ter re­view­ing the nec­es­sary le­gal process­es need­ed for their plans to move for­ward. The may­or said ac­cord­ing to a 2019 count, there were 441 home­less per­sons in Trinidad and To­ba­go with 229 in the cap­i­tal.