Housing budget for persons living with HIV/AIDS

The Ministry of Housing, Lands and Maintenance has allocated over $700 000 to provide housing for persons living with HIV/AIDS.

However, Minister Dwight Sutherland told the House of Assembly during the third week of debate on the Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure, that he was reticent to discuss the matter further due to the stigma still associated with the disease.

Sutherland was responding to questions raised by  Minister of People Empowerment and Elder Affairs Kirk Humphrey on why a provision for HIV prevention was located in the Housing Ministry’s budget for 2025-2026.

Humphrey queried: “In your budget, there’s a provision of $547,000 for HIV prevention, care, and support. My ministry has responsibility for the HIV, for the HIV Commission and Wellbeing. I’m just wondering what those monies; you have two budgets, actually. What are those monies  used for?”

According to Sutherland the allocation is used for rental accommodation for persons living with the disease. He explained 16 persons with HIV/AIDS were providing with housing in 2019, 2020 and 2021 while 20 persons were housed in  2022. In the current financial year of 2024- 2025 rental was provided for 26 clients living with the disease.

“This is all about housing for every last person. . . . We’ve also built houses over the years for persons living with HIV across the country,” the St George South MP noted.

He added: “This is a very sensitive area, and we don’t like to discuss this, to let persons know where these houses are, because this has a stigma associated with it. I will keep it that way. . . . I really don’t want any other member to speak on this programme because of the sensitive nature of it. The other budget, this is a smaller budget, is about sensitisation within the ministry.  We do fairs, we do several different programmes where we sensitise persons about the stigma [about] persons living with HIV and how they can live a life.

“These are some of the things we do at our ministry, but the bulk of the budget, the expenditure you see annually goes into housing persons with HIV and AIDS.”

(IMC1)