NOW president says more affordable housing needed

There are too many jobless women in Barbados struggling to keep a roof over their families’ heads, and there is an urgent need for them to be provided with safe and affordable housing.

President of the National Organization of Women (NOW) Marsha Hinds said this is a major problem which has worsened in recent months, due to a rise in unemployment as the COVID-19 pandemic forced some businesses to downsize or close their doors for now.

“All of the comforts of a home that we take for granted, some people have not had that for a while…. We have been getting between one and five calls a day with respect to the provision of safe houses for women and children. It is a serious issue at this point and what we are finding is that women are leaving their children in less than safe situations, not because they want to but because they perceive that they have to,” Hind-Layne said.

“So, there are some children who are now going to live with godparents, uncles and aunts that they might have known; but we all know, in Bajan parlance, that come see muh and a come live wid muh ain’t the same thing,” she added, noting that some children have also been left in “unsafe and unsure” environments.

Another spin-off of the lack of housing, the NOW president said, is that transactional sex is on the rise.

“There are some people who are in the position now where they are trading sex for shelter and sex for food. A lot of them are falling pregnant and that is the reality, because people are doing what they feel that they have to do,” she explained.

Insisting on the need for a solution to this housing problem, Hinds suggested that the Government should either provide grants to landlords to cover women unable to pay part or all of their rent, or make provisions in the law to prevent property owners from evicting tenants who find themselves in difficult financial situations at this time.

Hinds acknowledged that the safe house being run by the Business Professional Women’s Club falls under NOW. However, she stressed that it is not designed to provide long-term housing, and is a three-month housing solution for women who are at risk of being harmed by a domestic partner.

The calls for housing solutions which NOW has been receiving in recent times, she explained, have come from women who lost their rental or mortgage properties because they have not worked since the pandemic began affecting the island in March.

“[These are] women who work in the tourism sector and who are not going back to work anytime soon and who need a medium- to long-term solution, not in terms of employment but in terms of housing. Some of them would have been getting the $600 grant from the Government, but that grant cannot cover both food and rent and there are some landlords who are not giving any leniency whatsoever,” Hinds said.

The women’s rights activist said NOW has requested a meeting with Minister of People Empowerment Cynthia Forde to discuss the issue.

“We are still waiting on the scheduling of that appointment,” she said.

Meantime, based on calls NOW had received from women on the breadline, Hinds supported the recent assertion by trade unions that some employers were using the COVID-19 pandemic to downsize.

“Businesses are using this time to cut back on their numbers and the hours of their employees and that is causing a significant fallout for women especially…because we know that many times when relationships are terminated in Barbados women are left to take care of children. So, where a woman becomes homeless, chances are it is not only a woman that is homeless but it is a woman and children,” Hinds said.
anestahenry@barbadostoday.bb