Government will soon create a new agency to lead the charge of transforming derelict buildings and vacant lots into housing solutions for Barbadians, and it has already received funding to get the ball rolling.
Minister of Housing Dwight Sutherland made the disclosure as he pointed to a major housing deficit, with 18 000 applications currently before the National Housing Corporation (NHC).
Speaking at the Barbados Labour Party’s St Michael West branch annual general meeting at St Leonard’s Boys School on Sunday, he said there were 25 000 derelict and vacant lots across the island and the new state-run enterprise will help supplement the 10 000 homes the current administration is seeking to build during its tenure.
“We have some 18 000 applications at National Housing for housing and we have embarked on a 10 000 housing resolution . . . . There is still a deficit of 8 000, so the demand for housing is great. We are looking for avenues to satisfy the demand of the 18 000 applicants. One of our other projects is the utilisation of derelict and vacant lots. We have 25 000 vacant lots and derelict properties.
“So we are finding a way as a government to create a company that can treat that and have Government as a shareholder, similar to how we formed HOPE [Home Ownership Providing Energy]. We want to build a company to address derelict properties, not to take advantage of the owners but to work with them to put those derelict properties into use for housing,” he said.
“You have 18 000 NHC applicants and you have 25 000 derelict and vacant lots, so why leave them? That process [to create the company] has started . . . . We have received $700 000 from the IDB [Inter-American Development Bank] as a grant to assist us with the technical studies for that project.”
Sutherland promised to make a further announcement to give more details on that project in a few months.
He told the gathering that based on surveys that had been conducted, Barbados has sufficient land to construct more than 20 000 houses, but the Government embarked on a 10 000 housing scheme as it was a more realistic five-year target.
He said work to erect the 10 000 houses was progressing well and while some people had criticised the pace at which the houses were being constructed, it took time to build the infrastructure to support the homes.
The Government has partnered with three companies in its efforts – China’s East-West Solutions for steel-framed houses, Guyana’s Dura Villa to build hardwood houses, and HOPE.
As it relates to the Dura Villa houses, 11 are being erected in Clifton, St John and 65 in River Crescent, St Philip. Sutherland said 350 of the wooden houses will arrive in Barbados before the end of the financial year and thereafter, 1 000 houses would be imported annually.
Meanwhile, HOPE will be constructing 2 000 houses per year. The 154 houses being built in Lancaster, St James will be occupied before the end of this year, said Sutherland.
Ninety-two will be built in Colleton, St John; 36 in Briar Hall, Christ Church; 200 in Lower Burney, St Michael; and there are 100 acres in Vineyard, St Philip to be used for housing and another 100 acres in St Peter.
“So when people tell you that we are tinkering with the housing policy, that is not so,” Minister Sutherland said, noting that the challenge is getting the infrastructure in place. “The Government’s housing programme is alive and well and it is, in fact, progressing.”
Regarding the East-West Solutions houses, Sutherland said the 150 that were imported were originally for those displaced people following Hurricane Elsa 2021. However, he said the cost of those houses was higher than anticipated and not within the reach of those whose net income was less than $2 500.
He said 24 steel-framed houses were completed and 12 were occupied. By year-end, 47 more houses will be completed, he said, although 17 are yet to be started.
Twenty-eight houses will also be built in Bullens, St James.
Sutherland also disclosed that there were housing plans on the cards for City residents and they will complement the Bridgetown Transformation Project.
He said residents in Greenfield, the majority of whom live in deplorable conditions, will be relocated and new houses built in that area.
However, those living in Halls Road will be moved permanently to a new location as the Government plans to establish that neighbourhood as an entrepreneurial space.
(SZB)
