Yvonne Ba­boolal

No one has been evict­ed from any Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) home since the cor­po­ra­tion start­ed an ag­gres­sive ar­rears-col­lec­tion cam­paign over a year ago. "That's not true. Peo­ple have not been thrown out of their hous­es," Trix­ie Guy, man­ag­er of re­cov­er­ies, said, re­fut­ing claims that peo­ple who could not pay their HDC bills were put out. Guy said no­tices to quit were sent out to peo­ple who were ow­ing the HDC af­ter three at­tempts to get them to start pay­ments. She said even af­ter the quit no­tices were sent, the HDC had still tried to help them clear their ar­rears. Re­call­ing the re­cov­ery process, which was start­ed be­cause "plen­ty" peo­ple were not mak­ing their month­ly pay­ments, she said: "We go through the de­vel­op­ments and look at peo­ple who are in ar­rears. This in­cludes new and old unit-hold­ers. "From day one a per­son is giv­en his keys and re­mind­ed of his com­mit­ment to pay his in­stal­ments on a month­ly ba­sis (through a let­ter of agree­ment)."

She added: "If he doesn't, this rolls over in­to the sec­ond month. If he doesn't pay in the sec­ond month, he gets a sec­ond let­ter giv­ing him sev­en days to re­spond. "If he still does not re­spond, he gets an­oth­er let­ter giv­ing him 30 days to re­spond. "If the per­son con­tin­ues to be del­i­quent, he gets a quit no­tice, giv­ing him an­oth­er 30 days to re­spond," Guy said. "It's not an evic­tion let­ter. It's a quit no­tice re­quest­ing the per­son to come to the HDC of­fice and work out an ar­rears arrange­ment, in which he can make spe­cif­ic month­ly pay­ments over a pe­ri­od of 12 to 18 months. "Or he can liq­ui­date his ar­rears com­plete­ly. Some­times, we ask if they want a salary de­duc­tion so they will not have to come to the HDC to pay their in­stal­ments." Guy said there had been a vast im­prove­ment in pay­ments since the dri­ve start­ed. Asked if the cost of the hous­es and ris­ing in­fla­tion were rea­sons peo­ple could not meet their pay­ments, she said: "I don't find the cost of the hous­es ex­treme­ly high.Those same hous­es would go for three times their price on the mar­ket. And the pre­mi­ums are quite rea­son­able, too." She said af­ter three years, unit-hold­ers are giv­en the op­tion to own the unit by send­ing them to the T&T Mort­gage Fi­nance Com­pa­ny (TTMF), which buys the hous­es for them. Unit-hold­ers then pay the month­ly in­stal­ments to TTMF. Guy said the ar­rears-col­lec­tion dri­ve was on­go­ing and would con­tin­ue un­til all unit-hold­ers have paid off their ar­rears.