Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley says it is financially impossible to continue to provide state-subsidised houses for high-income earners.
Rowley, speaking at the key handover ceremony at Chaconia Crescent, Diego Martin, yesterday, said high-income earners would have to access homes from the private sector.
The financial constraints at the treasury level will lead to more policy changes at the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) and affect a percentage of the 200,000 applicants already seeking homes at the HDC.
Rowley blasted the old policy that made government-assisted housing available to applicants with a $45,000 combined monthly salary instead of the lower income of $25,000. The higher income earners, he said, should access private housing and leave government-assisted housing for those with less earning potential.
“The treasury is not able to fund a housing programme like we did five or seven years ago,” Rowley said.
Another change to the policy would see no more million-dollar housing units being offered by the HDC.
“If the HDC sets out and ends up building the finest housing units in T&T, you have to ask the question: can the State afford to give to middle and lower income people prime housing units built in T&T? If the answer is no, then who are you catering for?” Rowley asked.
“Nothing is free, someone has to pay for it,” he added. “Even if we want to do it, to provide a house for everybody, we can’t do it. The money is just not there,” he said. He said some HDC units cost as much as $4 million and if a buyer couldn’t afford to access that high-end property, then it should not be subsidised by the State and the taxpayer.
“Question taxpayers: should the Government of T&T give million-dollar units like that? The taxpayers of T&T cannot afford to provide to people looking for affordable housing in the multi-million dollar range,” he said.
He said the Government was now focused on how much money it had and what could be done with it to satisfy the needs of the citizenry. Rowley said that government-subsidised housing was not a constitutional right, it was a government policy. The PM said he would now seek to encourage the private sector to get more involved in the housing development.
“There is no shortage of money in the private sector,” Rowley said.
“As long as the HDC is seen as the only house building effort in the country, we will be waiting on too little money to fix the problem and leaving an underutilised large pool of money in the private sector that’s available,” he said.
Rowley said encouraging the private sector into housing development would “shift” the onus for providing houses from the public sector to the private sector.
“In the public sector taxpayers are paying, whereas in the private sector it’s a straight case of paying by affordability,” Rowley said. He said most people applied for HDC houses to access the government subsidy that went along with it.
The houses at Chaconia Crescent, which were given out yesterday, cost almost $1 million to build and were sold to buyers at $650,000.
“We cannot do that as a sustainable policy,” Rowley said.
“The nation is being asked to do the best that we can under difficult circumstances,” he said. —RS
‘Lower-tiered properties at Victoria Keys for government use’
Rowley said he instructed Housing Minister Marlene McDonald to bring a cabinet note which would allow the Government to access the lower-tiered properties at the HDC Victoria Keys in Diego Martin, to help offset the high cost of government rent.
That cabinet note will allow the Government to access lower-tiered properties for their own use, thereby removing some rental costs paid by the Government. “So the Government will take a few of them so the Government would not pay rent to other people.
We would sell the most expensive ones in the open market, we will put some on a rent to own...we will create an integrated community,” he said. Rowley did not say whether the properties would be used as private housing for government officials or to house state agencies.