Gail Alexan­der

As of yes­ter­day, peo­ple who had ap­plied for Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion-sub­sidised hous­ing on the ba­sis of a joint month­ly in­come of $45,000 will no longer be el­i­gi­ble for such hous­ing – even if they had pre-qual­i­fied for the process – and peo­ple with a joint month­ly in­come of $25,000 will be al­lowed to ac­cess that hous­ing in­stead.

Af­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Max­ie Cuffie an­nounced the new pol­i­cy de­ci­sion yes­ter­day – re­vers­ing the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion's pre­vi­ous pol­i­cy – for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said the change would pre­vent 80,000 peo­ple from ob­tain­ing sub­sidised hous­ing, in­clud­ing large­ly pub­lic ser­vants and pro­tec­tive ser­vices per­son­nel.

"Gen­er­al­ly, it will now be gov­ern­ment work­ers who will feel the pain of this pol­i­cy. It's a sour Christ­mas gift for pub­lic ser­vants, teach­ers, ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fi­cers, pro­tec­tive ser­vice of­fi­cers and sim­i­lar mid­dle in­come work­ers to re­ceive," Mooni­lal added.

Cuffie an­nounced the change of pol­i­cy at yes­ter­day's week­ly post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, say­ing those ap­pli­cants with a joint in­come of $45,000 would be tak­en off the HDC ap­pli­cant list im­me­di­ate­ly and the new pol­i­cy would ap­ply for the fu­ture. He said all homes to be dis­trib­uted in fu­ture would be in keep­ing with that pol­i­cy.

"If per­sons in that cat­e­go­ry ($45,000 joint earn­ing) have ap­plied (and qual­i­fied) they would no longer be el­i­gi­ble for sub­sidised hous­ing... once a de­ci­sion is tak­en. It's ei­ther you are al­lo­cat­ed a house and get a key; if you haven't been al­lo­cat­ed, then the de­ci­sion ap­plies to that," Cuffie said.

He said the de­ci­sion to change the PP's pre­vi­ous pol­i­cy of last year, which al­lowed ap­pli­cants with a joint in­come of $45,000 to qual­i­fy for sub­sidised state hous­ing, was tak­en by Cab­i­net yes­ter­day.

Cuffie added: "We want­ed to bring the qual­i­fy­ing lim­it clos­er to what was orig­i­nal­ly en­vis­aged in the Act of 2005 (in Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's tenure) which stip­u­lat­ed that the HDC should do every­thing to pro­vide af­ford­able shel­ter and as­so­ci­at­ed com­mu­ni­ty fa­cil­i­ties for low and mid­dle in­come cit­i­zens..."

"The first thing we took in­to con­sid­er­a­tion was the fact that the HDC's man­date was for low and mid­dle in­come hous­ing... the pri­ma­ry pur­pose of this change was to en­sure the HDC op­er­ates by law."

Cuffie said the orig­i­nal PNM stip­u­la­tion was re­versed by the PP, which led to low cost hous­ing be­ing af­ford­ed to peo­ple of high­er in­come and this af­fect­ed the avail­abil­i­ty of hous­es to low­er in­come earn­ers. He said Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) da­ta showed 60 per cent of em­ployed peo­ple earn less than $9,000 a month.

"So when you look at the fact that 60 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion earns $9,000 and less, you'll see the HDC was op­er­at­ing out­side of its man­date and it need­ed to op­er­ate ac­cord­ing to law. Rais­ing the joint in­come lim­it to $45,000 al­lowed it to op­er­ate out­side the law.

"So the re­vi­sion to the $25,000 joint in­come lim­it (the up­per lev­el) is in keep­ing with the HDC's man­date to serve low­er and mid­dle in­come cit­i­zens," he added

He said the CSO da­ta sug­gest­ed that those earn­ing above $25,000 would be a small por­tion of the mar­ket and "would be able to ac­cess fund­ing and fi­nanc­ing on the pri­vate mar­ket."

He lat­er told the T&T Guardian that the to­tal num­ber of peo­ple who have ap­plied for hous­es cur­rent­ly stands at 160,000. He main­tained, how­ev­er, that 60 per cent of that num­ber had a joint month­ly in­come of $9,000.

Cuffie added: "If you con­struct hous­es for the $45,000 brack­et, you're tak­ing scarce re­sources from where it's most need­ed and pro­vid­ing sub­sidised hous­ing for peo­ple who may not re­al­ly need it."

He couldn't say, how­ev­er, how many peo­ple who were al­lo­cat­ed hous­es but had not yet re­ceived keys, might now fall in­to the group of those in­el­i­gi­ble.

"That is a very de­tailed ques­tion I can­not an­swer now," Cuffie said.

He said he was not sure it was cor­rect that the new pol­i­cy would elim­i­nate a group of peo­ple who now, would not be able to own a house in the cur­rent mar­ket.

He added: "Pri­or to this de­ci­sion, the re­al es­tate mar­ket was very vi­brant and the mere af­ford­ing of the $45,000 lim­it im­pact­ed on the re­al es­tate mar­ket gen­er­al­ly. By bring­ing back the lim­it to $25,000, we would be al­low­ing peo­ple to en­ter the pri­vate hous­ing mar­ket where peo­ple were com­fort­able be­fore the (PP) change (of lim­it).

"I don't think the is­sue is ac­cess­ing hous­ing, as much as it's that more peo­ple un­der the $25,000 month­ly lim­it, where there are the most peo­ple seek­ing hous­ing, we would have more hous­es and re­sources avail­able to pro­vide hous­ing for them."

On peo­ple with joint in­comes of $45,000 who had al­ready re­ceived a house, Cuffie said: "I don't think we can do any­thing about that. It's in the past. What we are deal­ing with (the $25,000 joint in­come lim­it) is for fu­ture al­lo­ca­tions."

He said the coun­try had seen a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in state hous­ing con­struc­tion costs over the last five years.

Cuffie said HDC would re­sume dis­trib­ut­ing keys for hous­es this week­end in Diego Mar­tin and oth­er ar­eas.

Cuffie re­ferred oth­er queries to Hous­ing Min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald, who didn't an­swer calls and emailed queries.

HDC man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Jear­lean John was not avail­able for com­ment on the pol­i­cy change yes­ter­day.