Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) says if re­turned to of­fice, it will seek to dis­trib­ute 500 homes per week, as it called Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young’s pro­posed hous­ing pol­i­cy an out-of-touch fan­ta­sy. 

Speak­ing in Point Fortin on Tues­day night, Prime Min­is­ter Young said if re­turned to of­fice his gov­ern­ment will de­liv­er a sub­stan­tial hous­ing pro­gramme for young peo­ple, in­volv­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of 3,000 lots for home con­struc­tion.  

The Prime Min­is­ter added that the ini­tia­tive in­volves de­vel­op­ing state lands and pro­vid­ing the nec­es­sary in­fra­struc­ture, in­clud­ing elec­tric­i­ty, wa­ter con­nec­tions, and house plans for young peo­ple. El­i­gi­bil­i­ty would be lim­it­ed to first-time own­ers, who could pur­chase the lots and build their own homes in line with these plans. 

But in re­sponse yes­ter­day, UNC deputy leader and for­mer Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Jear­lean John, told Guardian Me­dia, “He said they are go­ing to de­vel­op 3,000 lots? Now I don’t know in the ten years they have been there, that they’ve built 3,000 hous­es. If they are go­ing to de­vel­op 3,000 lots, the HDC data­base at this time is hov­er­ing around 160,000 ap­pli­cants, and that is even af­ter they cleaned up the data­base. So, you have 160,000 peo­ple sit­ting down in that data­base hop­ing the gov­ern­ment can help them, but he is talk­ing about 3,000 lots. How is that im­pact­ing the hous­ing cri­sis we are now fac­ing?” 

The PM said the mort­gage for the first-time home­own­ers would be based on a val­ue rang­ing be­tween $1 mil­lion and $1.5 mil­lion. 

On this as­pect, John claimed Young showed he was un­aware of the coun­try’s so­cio-eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ties. 

“I don’t know which cir­cus he hangs out in, but I don’t know if there are many young peo­ple who can af­ford that mort­gage. The last time I looked at a house in the pri­vate sec­tor, a house for $1.275 mil­lion was at­tract­ing a rate of in­ter­est of 4.5 per cent to five per cent over a 30–35-year pe­ri­od, that is a long pe­ri­od, and the month­ly pay­ment was $6,500.” 

John added, “Again, if he is look­ing at the HDC data­base, that data­base would tell him that the ma­jor­i­ty of the peo­ple on that data­base earns $5,000 to $8,000 per month. So he is start­ing wrong and what he is do­ing is show­ing us how out of touch he is with main­stream Trinidad and To­ba­go.” 

Asked about the UNC’s hous­ing pol­i­cy, par­tic­u­lar­ly for the coun­try’s youth, John ex­plained, “The UNC al­ter­na­tive­ly is say­ing that some­one now com­ing out of school or train­ing, they are go­ing to put a por­tion of their salaries in a home own­er­ship fund be­cause we must do that to help peo­ple help them­selves. We are go­ing to pro­vide di­rect fi­nan­cial sup­port to a first-time home­own­er­ship grant cov­er­ing a por­tion of the down­pay­ment, so you are go­ing straight to the heart of the mat­ter.” 

John added, “So you put a lit­tle piece of your mon­ey, it is in­ter­est bear­ing, the gov­ern­ment will match it so it will be a cir­cu­lar pool of fund­ing and we are look­ing to build at least 10,000 hous­es per year.” 

The UNC deputy leader said be­cause the UNC had “per­fect­ed” the mod­el be­tween 2010-2015, “I am sure we can get in­to 500 hous­es per week and climb­ing.” 

Mean­while, speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s UNC me­dia brief­ing, an­oth­er UNC deputy leader, David Lee, said Young’s promis­es sound sus­pi­cious­ly like his par­ty’s poli­cies. 

“We have some­thing in our man­i­festo on that (hous­ing), I don’t want to elab­o­rate too much, I will leave that to the  leader to roll that out but we do have a pol­i­cy in re­spect to that and maybe Mr Young got a copy of our pol­i­cy be­fore time be­cause some of the things he is talk­ing about now, the elec­tion gim­micks, even the de­mer­it points sys­tem that they’re re-look­ing at, it’s some­thing that Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar had called about in Par­lia­ment. She had called about re­view­ing that whole de­mer­it points sys­tem, so it is cu­ri­ous that Mr Young is com­ing at the 99th hour with these elec­tion gim­micks and I am say­ing in clos­ing in 10 years they couldn’t fix it, and they won’t in two weeks.” 

Guardian Me­dia sought to get the views of the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) and the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front (PF)but their po­lit­i­cal lead­ers did not re­spond to our mes­sages and calls.