Government touts housing ‘HOPE’

Over 700 hurricane resilient houses, fitted with photovoltaic (PV) systems are to built by Government over the next 12 months, as its Home Ownership Programme launched Friday was billed by the Prime Minister as being top of her administration’s agenda to help citizens and their families through easy access to affordable housing.

Mia Mottley told guests at the Ministry of Housing’s Home Ownership Programme’s launch at Lancaster, St. James, that the project which is being developed by the recently created Home Ownership Providing Energy Inc. (HOPE Inc), will be one of multiple avenues to homeownership for Barbadians and an important investment by the Government that it takes very seriously.

Mortgage instalments at the Lancaster homes are to range from $795 for two-bedroom homes to $1000 for three-bedroom houses. Over the next 18 months, similar developments are to begin at Colleton, St. Lucy, and in St John at Pool and Todds.

The PM said: “In this country’s development since the 1930s, nothing has been more evident than the fact that the greatest task is to enfranchise and to root our people. We have come through this journey, through multiple directions; education is critical to secure the enfranchisement of our people, but so equally is ownership.  As we have said since coming to government, ownership matters.

“You can pay rent as I learned as a young student, and that rent, that $600, $800, $1,000, is as good as when it left your hand… it is dead. You can pay the same money to a mortgage, and all of a sudden, you are now owning something, and developing equity [and] developing a capacity to go back and borrow against that very same thing.”

Creating modern housing solutions for the island’s middle to low-income earners is not only important to the administration, Mottley said, but their sustainability is an important part of the wide range of projects being undertaken in Government’s housing plans.

She added: “Use the asset to earn for the homeowner, such that if there is a gap between where they currently are, and where they want to be, that the asset of the house with the use of the photovoltaic panels on the roof, that we can therefore bridge that gap [for] who would otherwise be incapable of accessing a mortgage and being able to buy this property because it is outside of what is considered affordable by the established financial community, can now do so.”

Minister of Housing Dr William Duguid also spoke to the attendees of the Government’s “creative and compassionate”  approach to affordable housing solutions.

Dr Duguid said: “To put good housing solutions within the easy, affordable reach of the average public officer or private sector worker; for example, the teacher, the police officer, the nurse, that might be earning $4,000 per month or less.

“As you may know from our manifesto, this government’s vision is to drive down house and land prices, to satisfy what is a basic human need, and a fundamental human right… a right to adequate and affordable housing in Barbados. I want to say this morning that it is a vision and duty that this government will never grow tired of, striving to fulfil. Yes, the demand is great, but it is our daily task to find creative ways of meeting it.”
(SB)