The Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s (HDC) dis­clo­sure of the depth of its fi­nan­cial cri­sis should jolt the na­tion­al con­science.

Chair­man Feeroz Khan’s can­did ac­count of an or­gan­i­sa­tion buried un­der loss­es, bloat­ed con­tracts, and years of ques­tion­able de­ci­sion-mak­ing re­veals a pub­lic in­sti­tu­tion tee­ter­ing on the verge of col­lapse. Yet it al­so forces a broad­er reck­on­ing about the coun­try’s hous­ing dilem­ma — one that now in­cludes a wait­ing list “well over 175,000” ap­pli­cants and po­lit­i­cal promis­es that rarely match op­er­a­tional re­al­i­ty.

Khan’s num­bers are stag­ger­ing. Loss­es of more than $700 mil­lion in each of the last two fis­cal years; $600 mil­lion in un­paid bills; an over­drawn bank ac­count by $100 mil­lion; and a $400 mil­lion deficit in the em­ploy­ees’ pen­sion plan. This is not mis­man­age­ment in the ab­stract; it is a struc­tur­al break­down of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that ac­cu­mu­lat­ed, un­no­ticed or un­chal­lenged, for years.

At the heart of the cri­sis is a hous­ing mod­el that sim­ply does not work. As Khan blunt­ly put it, the HDC has been build­ing homes at $1.6 mil­lion and sell­ing them for less than half that price. No sus­tain­able pub­lic hous­ing sys­tem any­where in the world can sur­vive such a gap. The chair­man’s bit­ing anal­o­gy — that it might have been cheap­er to hand cit­i­zens cash and ask them to buy their own homes — ex­pos­es the ab­sur­di­ty of the cur­rent ap­proach.

But con­struc­tion over­runs are on­ly part of the sto­ry. Khan de­tailed a pat­tern of in­flat­ed and poor­ly su­per­vised con­tracts that drained re­sources with as­ton­ish­ing ef­fi­cien­cy. One con­trac­tor, he said, was paid $18,000 plus VAT every month for cut­ting three acres of grass — work that should cost a frac­tion of that. Yet, for near­ly ten years, the con­tract rolled on.

Even more as­tound­ing is the sew­er treat­ment plant in Bon Air West, where costs bal­looned from $3.6 mil­lion to $34 mil­lion through a se­quence of vari­a­tions un­sup­port­ed by com­plet­ed work. These are not mere ac­count­ing er­rors, they are il­lus­tra­tions of a sys­tem in which pro­cure­ment rules were treat­ed as in­con­ve­niences rather than safe­guards.

Khan’s im­me­di­ate re­sponse — ter­mi­nat­ing con­tracts with at least 50 main­te­nance providers and hint­ing at fur­ther staff re­duc­tions — is con­tro­ver­sial but un­avoid­able. With month­ly over­heads of $40 mil­lion, in­clud­ing up to $16 mil­lion in wages, the chair­man in­sists that a small­er, sus­tain­able or­gan­i­sa­tion is the on­ly path for­ward. It is cold com­fort to work­ers whose con­tracts will not be re­newed, but fis­cal bank­rupt­cy serves no one, least of all the thou­sands still wait­ing for hous­ing.

Yet while the HDC down­sizes its op­er­a­tions, po­lit­i­cal ac­tors are is­su­ing bold promis­es of rapid trans­for­ma­tion. The UNC has pro­posed build­ing 20,000 af­ford­able homes in two years, re­viv­ing land dis­tri­b­u­tion pro­grammes and of­fer­ing grants, low-in­ter­est loans, and rental-to-own ini­tia­tives for vul­ner­a­ble groups. Many of these ideas are at­trac­tive. Some are over­due. But giv­en the state of the HDC, they al­so raise the ques­tion: Can any large-scale hous­ing plan suc­ceed with­out first fix­ing the foun­da­tion?

The re­al­i­ty is that T&T’s hous­ing short­age re­quires a re­build­ing of trust, trans­paren­cy and ca­pac­i­ty. The pub­lic de­serves clar­i­ty, not slo­gans. The HDC must present a re­cov­ery plan ground­ed in re­al num­bers, prop­er pro­cure­ment and long-term dis­ci­pline.

Fur­ther­more, any po­lit­i­cal par­ty se­ri­ous about solv­ing the hous­ing cri­sis must first com­mit to re­form­ing the in­sti­tu­tions that will car­ry out those promis­es.

On­ly then can the coun­try move from hous­ing chaos to hous­ing hope.