Min­is­ter of Hous­ing, Dr David Lee, has is­sued a call for all hands on deck and says it will take a mul­ti-faceted ap­proach to ef­fec­tive­ly tack­le the chal­lenges fac­ing ur­ban com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try.

The Hous­ing Min­is­ter made the call as he joined the Unit­ed Na­tions and the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty in ob­serv­ing World Habi­tat Day 2025. This year’s theme is “Ur­ban Cri­sis Re­sponse”.

World Habi­tat Day, ob­served an­nu­al­ly on the first Mon­day in Oc­to­ber, high­lights the need to as­sess the state of towns and cities and reaf­firms the right to ad­e­quate shel­ter. It al­so marks the start of “Ur­ban Oc­to­ber”, a cam­paign aimed at pro­mot­ing ac­tion to­ward sus­tain­able ur­ban de­vel­op­ment.

Min­is­ter Lee not­ed that ur­ban com­mu­ni­ties con­tin­ue to face chal­lenges such as cli­mate change, flood­ing, over­crowd­ing, pol­lu­tion, and in­creas­ing de­mand for hous­ing. He said these is­sues re­quire aware­ness and co­or­di­nat­ed ac­tion across all sec­tors.

The Min­is­ter said the cre­ation of sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ties can­not rest with gov­ern­ment alone and called for col­lab­o­ra­tion among civ­il so­ci­ety, pri­vate in­dus­try, acad­e­mia, and in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies.

He stat­ed that the Hous­ing Min­istry re­mains fo­cused on a holis­tic ap­proach to hous­ing and ur­ban de­vel­op­ment, em­pha­sis­ing the build­ing of com­mu­ni­ties where peo­ple can thrive and fam­i­lies can feel se­cure.

Dr Lee said the Min­istry has en­gaged stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing the High Com­mis­sion­er of In­dia, in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, Habi­tat for Hu­man­i­ty Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ Fac­ul­ty of En­gi­neer­ing, the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, and the Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion.

He urged cit­i­zens to play their part in sup­port­ing com­mu­ni­ties and the en­vi­ron­ment.

Min­is­ter Lee reaf­firmed Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to im­prov­ing cit­i­zens’ qual­i­ty of life and ad­vanc­ing na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment through hous­ing ini­tia­tives.