Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) has un­veiled a new 100-unit res­i­den­tial de­vel­op­ment in Cau­ra, with the cor­po­ra­tion say­ing the homes are com­plet­ed and await­ing de­liv­ery to prospec­tive home­own­ers.

The Canopies at Cau­ra was opened to the me­dia for view­ing yes­ter­day, with HDC Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Ronald Hug­gins de­scrib­ing the project as the re­sult of sig­nif­i­cant work and col­lab­o­ra­tion.

“This here is a re­sult of a lot of hard work, ded­i­ca­tion and a lot of team­work,” Hug­gins said.

“It was not an easy jour­ney.”

Hug­gins said the de­vel­op­ment should be viewed not on­ly in terms of the phys­i­cal struc­tures con­struct­ed, but al­so the im­pact home own­er­ship could have on fam­i­lies.

“When you tour the fa­cil­i­ty, you’ll re­alise that it’s not just about build­ings and phys­i­cal struc­ture, but the im­pact that these homes will have on the lives of cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by the HDC, the de­vel­op­ment sits on 4.6 hectares of land in Cau­ra and com­pris­es 100 units across 19 build­ings.

The cor­po­ra­tion said each unit pro­vides ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,144 square feet of liv­ing space and fea­tures three bed­rooms, two-and-a-half bath­rooms, a 1,000-gal­lon wa­ter stor­age ca­pac­i­ty, a wa­ter pump and an in­di­vid­ual mail­box.

The HDC said con­struc­tion by con­trac­tor FIDES Ltd be­gan on Oc­to­ber 9, 2023, with all 100 units com­plet­ed on Au­gust 20 this year.

The cor­po­ra­tion said the units are now await­ing de­liv­ery, pend­ing the vest­ing of the lands to the HDC and com­ple­tion of sales to prospec­tive home­own­ers.

Tu­na­puna MP Roger Alexan­der wel­comed the de­vel­op­ment, say­ing it would pro­vide fam­i­lies with an op­por­tu­ni­ty to own their homes.

“This means so much to Tu­na­puna,” Alexan­der said.

He urged the peo­ple even­tu­al­ly se­lect­ed for the de­vel­op­ment to help main­tain the com­mu­ni­ty.

“Be good to your­self, be good to your neigh­bour. Be good to the com­mu­ni­ty,” Alexan­der said.

Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee, mean­while, said the stan­dard of the de­vel­op­ment was what the Gov­ern­ment want­ed repli­cat­ed across the coun­try.

“This de­vel­op­ment here to­day is what we would like to see through­out the length and breadth of Trinidad un­der HDC,” Lee said.

Lee de­scribed the town­hous­es and over­all site as “first-class”, while crit­i­cis­ing the con­di­tion in which he said the cor­po­ra­tion was in­her­it­ed from the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“What we in­her­it­ed was an HDC that was bro­ken. It was an HDC that left much to be de­sired un­der the last ad­min­is­tra­tion,” Lee said.

He ex­pressed con­fi­dence in HDC chair­man Feeroz Khan and his team, say­ing the pub­lic would “see a dif­fer­ence in hous­ing in Trinidad” un­der the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion.