Housing and Urban Development Minister Randall Mitchell says the former People's Partnership government delayed the distribution of hundreds of housing units in order to facilitate its "100 homes per week" campaign in 2015.
Speaking to reporters at a key distribution ceremony in Lisas Gardens, Couva, yesterday, Mitchell said contractors now have to replace housing fixtures that were vandalised or stolen from those developments.
"Under the former regime, what they did was they delayed the distribution of houses until close to the election where they could do this PR campaign of giving out 100 homes per week. So they would have given those out.Under this administration, as soon as they become available, we are distributing them. Under the previous regime, the delay in handing out those units until the end, close to the election, would have left those units opened to vandals and criminals to come and steal," Mitchell said.
While doing so, he said they had left several housing developments that were started prior to 2010 incomplete, resulting in higher construction cost for those units. Some developments that were left incomplete were Lake View, View Fort, Victoria Keys and Real Springs. However, he said that because the contracts were still in place, those projects were restarted. So far, some units at Lake View, Point Fortin were given out.
Mitchell said the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) was seeking $500 million a year from the conversion of rent-to-own contracts in order to complete those developments.
He said that between 2015 and 2017, the rate of conversion of rent-to-own to mortgages would have earned the HDC close to $600m while there is approximately $2 billion to be generated.
However, the HDC is saddled with a debt to contractors, which hovers around $700 million.
"We are ramping up our mortgage conversion caravan so that we can get money as fast as possible to extinguish those debts and to construct more units."
Over the past year, the HDC completed four developments 0f 1,089 units and allocated 1,300 units with at least 500 more to be given out by the year's end. Mitchell said work has started on six new developments which are expected to yield 1,200 units. Yesterday, keys were given out for units in Exchange, Couva; Bon Air, Arouca; Corinth Hill, Ste Madeleine; Cypress Hill, San Fernando; Ridgewood Gardens, Golconda; Olera Heights, San Fernando; Pier View, La Brea; and Malick, Barataria.