Housing dilemma

A 63-year-old Christ Church man is living in fear that any day now National Housing Corporation (NHC) officials can show up and change the locks at the Government unit he has occupied since the mid 1990s.

Close to tears, as he sat in the living room of his 12 E Silver Hill Drive, Christ Church unit, Victor Small said he was summoned to a meeting last Friday at NHC where he was informed that he had a week to vacate the premises.

Small, who owes NHC BDS$840 in rent as of September 2019 said that during that same meeting he was given the option to be transferred to a one-bedroom unit at Sayes Court.

Victor Small

He said the proceedings of that meeting left him in tears.

“The lady at NHC told me that this house is too much for one man. She is claiming that in here is too big for me and them want to put me in a bachelor’s quarters for BDS$20 a week.

“If you hear how them people carry me long inside that place. A man was in the room with the lady on Friday when she was talking to me, and he went and bring this lock in the room and telling me this is the new lock that he will come and put on. Man I was so disturbed I was crying,” Small recalled.

Small said he moved into the unit with his girlfriend Diana Callender in 1995. She died in 2016 but her name was on the rental contract. However he said he has always assisted with paying the rent and believes that the time he shared the home with his common-law wife give him the right to continue living at the unit.

The father of two explained that the rent is in arrears because he is unemployed due to illness.

He said that he is currently receiving assistance from the Welfare Department because since he was diagnosed with diabetes in 2012 “it is difficult for me to keep work because I always feeling sick”.

“If not for welfare I don’t know where I would be today. But you think that I was living here for 20 something years and only owe $840 and that give people the right to come to transfer me and to put me from here? I know people that ain’t live in these houses for so long and owe more than that there and still living in them. This ain’t even a year in rent I owe and I will try my best to pay it,” he said.

Small continued: “Since I come down with diabetes sometimes I does feel good, and sometimes I don’t feel good. Sometimes I wake up feeling alright and two twos I tired and weary. Then because I ain’t working I don’t eat well. I get help from my boys or them sister,” he said.

He also argued that he could not understand how NHC officials came to the conclusion that he was living alone since his sons overnight at times, especially if he is unwell.
anestahenry@barbadostoday.bb