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Promise of better housing

It seems that in an almost immediate and coincidental response to my article last week, Housing Minister Dr Keith Rowley announced that the Government plans to spend about $1.3 billion on housing projects in the country over the next two years. This is also partly in an attempt to make good on an election promise of providing affordable housing to the population, especially to those in the middle to lower income brackets.

Now this is fantastic news and will spare many people from the indignity of having to just rent a tent, but one hopes that the Government and the Housing Ministry and the National Housing Authority will all work together to ensure that they go about these developments in a properly-planned and structured way, and not just rush it through in a haphazard, disorganised manner as some cheap election gimmick to merely garner additional votes.

There are much more serious implications for the nation here.

We have to be careful that we so plan and regulate our country’s infrastructural and community development that we no longer create State-sponsored ghetto areas, as occurs in some pockets of some communities.

Only last week we had the prisons officers complaining about NHA settlements that are high-risk areas, and they were asking for some move to be made by the Housing Ministry to alleviate this problem for their members.

State-sponsored

housing for bandits

Now these NHA settlements that they are complaining about are Government-built and state-managed—or mismanaged as the case may be.

Last year we heard the Housing Minister attempting to read the riot act to NHA tenants and warning of dire consequences if they failed to pay their rents on time, or at all.

His bleating plea comes long after the horse has bolted. You are talking about situations where for years and years these delinquent tenants have been allowed to get away with not paying rents, not paying mortgages, changing owners/occupiers without notifying the NHA; they have generally evolved into the monstrous, unruly beasts which spawn some of the nation’s worst hotspots, flashpoints and high-crime areas.

Credit must be given to Minister Rowley’s valiant attempts to rein in a situation long since gone awry, but the fact of the matter is that what we have there, in some of those NHA residences, is state-sponsored housing and accommodation for bandits, drug lords, pimps and pushers, and maybe even kidnappers!

This type of scenario is obviously intolerable and not only must we ensure that it does not continue, but we must also take the necessary steps and measures to safeguard all future developments of this kind, to prevent them from degenerating into a morass of modern urban-style, ghetto-fabulous enclaves.

The few bad eggs

Imagine how bad is it in some of these communities, where officers employed by the Ministry of National Security come out and say they can no longer feel safe living there?

What then is left for the general public to feel?

This has been exacerbated by the murder last week, of prisons officer Anslem Paul, who, by all reports, appeared to be a no-nonsense, serious type of officer. If it isn’t safe for him, then who is it safe for?

The rogue elements in these communities are obviously in the minority, as the majority of folk living in these communities are good, honest, hard-working people, but the few bad eggs give the whole area a bad name.

Furthermore, the few bad eggs don’t just stay there in the pockets of these communities but they move outwards and roam abroad at nights, leaving trails of murder, robbery, kidnapping and mayhem in their wake. This is where it impacts severely on the entire country.

We have to consider in the future, some form of social engineering when we start constructing these Government housing projects. We have to start trying to approach it from a long-term, structured, gradual and positive development, such as Home Construction Ltd has achieved in Trincity.

The Housing Ministry has to start imposing some sense of responsibility and some sense of pride and self-respect in the applicants and occupiers of its new developments.

If need be, they will have to impose covenants as to how the premises are to be kept and maintained. They may have to put in clauses in the leases, such as apply to some townhouse and high-rise developments in gated communities, so as to ensure that there is a sense of communal responsibility.

Social engineering for communal responsibility

The NHA and the Housing Ministry must realise that it is not just a matter of knocking up a few houses in time for elections, otherwise we will just end up creating more and more ghetto or ghetto-type areas around our country.

We must move away from these types of knee-jerk actions and reactions if we want to ensure the long-term stability and development of this country.

Efforts must be made also to ensure that the properties are paid for in a timely manner by way of rents or mortgages. The Government must insist on getting payment. If these payments are not made, then the Government must take steps for eviction or sale of the properties as occurs in the private sector.

The Government is already providing subsidised low-cost housing at attractive and affordable terms. The least the tenants/occupiers can do is to try to meet their obligations to pay their rents or mortgages.

It is not fair to the rest of the nation’s homeowners/occupiers who have to so manage themselves to ensure that they can meet their mortgage or rent payments when the month-end comes when you have, on the other hand, a whole mass of people burdening the treasury and taxpayers with non-payment of their rents and mortgages.

It has been shown time and time again that when people have to put out something to acquire assets, they tend to appreciate, treasure and care for them more than if they just got them for free, so this has to be applied here too.

If the Government and the NHA insist on these tenants/occupiers paying up on their obligations in a timely manner and maintaining and keeping their premises in a fit and proper state of repair, then there are tremendous spin-off benefits for the nation at large, as we will begin creating positive, progressive, safer communities as we move onwards, in the thrust for housing for all.