To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

It's hard to sep­a­rate which is the more em­bar­rass­ing sit­u­a­tion at the Ch­agua­nas Li­ons Gate hous­ing de­vel­op­ment. Is it the ap­palling re­al­i­ty that 231 hous­ing units, sore­ly need­ed on the lo­cal mar­ket have been al­lowed, on the verge of com­ple­tion, to lapse in­to rot and ru­in, or is it the ev­i­dent hap­less­ness of every­one re­spon­si­ble for the project when faced by di­rect ques­tions about it? The facts sur­round­ing the hous­ing de­vel­op­ment at Egypt Street, En­ter­prise are these. In April 2007, Brave Li­on, a con­struc­tion con­trac­tor, was award­ed a con­tract for $156 mil­lion to con­struct the Ch­agua­nas de­vel­op­ment.

By the fourth quar­ter of 2010, the project, in the fi­nal stages of com­ple­tion, ap­par­ent­ly stalled com­plete­ly. As ear­ly as No­vem­ber 2009, Bruno Moli­nari, an Ital­ian-born Cana­di­an con­tract­ed to work on the project, claims that his salary pay­ments came to an end. By then, he says, Brave Li­on's of­fices had closed. Brave Li­on di­rec­tor Joseph Azar point­ed to the HDC, claim­ing that the State de­vel­op­ment com­pa­ny had stopped pay­ments on the project since No­vem­ber 2009. Since then, the com­pa­ny has ap­par­ent­ly be­come a non­func­tion­al shell. The Brave Li­on CEO has re­signed, and the Chief Op­er­at­ing Of­fi­cer is in Cana­da, ac­cord­ing to Azar.

That sit­u­a­tion has led to con­trac­tors re­tained by Brave Li­on, most no­tably Geni­var, pre­sent­ing their case for pay­ment di­rect­ly to the HDC. All that HDC Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Jear­lean John could say about the mat­ter is that "99 per cent of the hous­es have been com­plet­ed. We re­al­ly have lit­tle or noth­ing to do there."

Eye­wit­ness re­ports from the site sug­gest oth­er­wise. With weak se­cu­ri­ty and an aban­doned work site, the Li­ons Gate de­vel­op­ment, over­grown by bush, is now ap­par­ent­ly be­ing tar­get­ed by van­dals and thieves in­tent on strip­ping the de­vel­op­ment of its ma­te­ri­als.

Li­ons Gate isn't the on­ly gov­ern­ment project to draw close to com­ple­tion and oc­cu­pan­cy on­ly to lapse in­to a twi­light zone of aban­don­ment and pre­da­tion. At Corinth, a large hous­ing project with dozens of apart­ments has less than 10 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy, is over­grown with bush more than six feet tall and vines are busy tak­ing ad­van­tage of the un­oc­cu­pied "trel­lis­es" pro­vid­ed for them by the gov­ern­ment. This is an un­ten­able sit­u­a­tion and an out­right em­bar­rass­ment to a gov­ern­ment that claims to have set the needs of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go first on its po­lit­i­cal agen­da.

The Min­istry of Hous­ing must move to per­form a thor­ough au­dit of its hous­ing projects, and ex­ist­ing hous­ing stock to eval­u­ate what's un­der con­struc­tion and at what stage of com­ple­tion these projects have reached. That re­view should al­so clar­i­fy the sta­tus of out­stand­ing pay­ments due on these projects and en­sure that funds are fast tracked to meet con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions and end un­pro­duc­tive and need­less le­gal ac­tion on mat­ters that are bet­ter en­gaged di­rect­ly through ap­pro­pri­ate me­di­a­tion and mu­tu­al­ly agreed on sched­ules of pay­ment. It should nev­er be the case that hous­es so close to com­ple­tion should be al­lowed to de­te­ri­o­rate and in so do­ing in­cur ad­di­tion­al costs for re­pairs be­cause of van­dal­i­sa­tion.

The Min­istry of Hous­ing should take the lead in iden­ti­fy­ing these lapsed projects and dri­ve them to com­ple­tion, ready­ing much need­ed hous­es for dis­tri­b­u­tion to the home­own­ers who, in many cas­es, have been wait­ing for decades for an op­por­tu­ni­ty to oc­cu­py a home of their own. Bil­lions of dol­lars have been spent on con­struc­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go, but much of it hasn't af­fect­ed the av­er­age cit­i­zen.

The Hous­ing Min­istry re­ceived the third largest bud­get al­lo­ca­tion in Fri­day's marathon sit­ting of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, plac­ing an ad­di­tion­al $241 mil­lion at its dis­pos­al. The gov­ern­ment has a clear op­por­tu­ni­ty here to lever­age mon­ey al­ready spent on these hous­ing projects through de­ci­sive, re­sults fo­cused man­age­ment of a sit­u­a­tion that's like­ly to di­rect­ly ben­e­fit the thou­sands of peo­ple wait­ing and hop­ing for ac­cess to pub­lic hous­ing.