The Trinidad and To­ba­go Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTB­WA) has raised con­cerns that blind and vi­su­al­ly im­paired per­sons were ex­clud­ed from re­cent pub­lic hous­ing al­lo­ca­tions, de­spite Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to in­clude per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties.

In a state­ment, the as­so­ci­a­tion said it “recog­nis­es the sig­nif­i­cance of pro­vid­ing safe and se­cure hous­ing to fam­i­lies who have wait­ed many years,” but ex­pressed “deep dis­ap­point­ment that, based on the in­for­ma­tion avail­able to us, no blind or vi­su­al­ly im­paired per­sons ap­pear to have been among the ben­e­fi­cia­ries.”

It stressed that “hous­ing is not mere­ly a so­cial ben­e­fit; it is a fun­da­men­tal com­po­nent of in­de­pen­dence, dig­ni­ty, safe­ty, and in­clu­sion.”

TTB­WA urged au­thor­i­ties to im­prove “the vis­i­bil­i­ty and track­ing of ap­pli­cants with dis­abil­i­ties with­in hous­ing al­lo­ca­tion sys­tems” and called for “de­lib­er­ate in­clu­sion of per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties, in­clud­ing blind per­sons, in fu­ture hous­ing dis­tri­b­u­tions.” The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so en­cour­aged “en­gage­ment with rep­re­sen­ta­tive or­gan­i­sa­tions, such as TTB­WA, to en­sure that hous­ing poli­cies and al­lo­ca­tions are in­clu­sive by de­sign and re­spon­sive to lived re­al­i­ties.”

The Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion con­firmed that 122 homes were hand­ed over be­tween April 28 and No­vem­ber 21, 2025, most­ly at Cy­press Hills in San Fer­nan­do and Oa­sis Greens in Ch­agua­nas. Ac­cord­ing to the 2026 bud­get, hous­ing units at the HDC’s tow­ers in Ed­in­burgh are in­tend­ed to pro­vide ac­com­mo­da­tion for per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties. Since the April elec­tion, sev­er­al con­tracts—to­talling just over $8 mil­lion—have been award­ed to com­plete up­per floors of the West Block at Ed­in­burgh Tow­ers.

TTB­WA said it “re­mains ready and will­ing to en­gage con­struc­tive­ly with pol­i­cy­mak­ers and hous­ing au­thor­i­ties to sup­port more in­clu­sive out­comes in fu­ture al­lo­ca­tions.”

—Ke­jan Haynes