The size of the waiting list for affordable housing from the state-run Housing Development Corporation (HDC) is rivalled only by the huge debt owed by its delinquent tenants.
The latest available figures show that the agency is owed approximately $151 million, which includes more than $22 million accumulated by tenants in new properties such as the Vieux Fort Housing Development in St James, where there were evictions earlier this week.
At the same time, a seemingly insurmountable waiting list, estimated to be well over 175,000 people, adds to the burden facing the HDC.
With only about 700 new units added to the public housing stock annually, the demand for affordable low- and middle-income homes far outstrips supply.
This is the biggest problem facing the recently restructured HDC, now divided into three distinct entities in the latest attempt at operating efficiency.
Unfortunately, each of these units — HDC Construction Co Ltd for property development, HDC Facilities Estate Management Co Ltd for property management and HDC Asset Management Co Ltd for the sale of housing units and management of existing housing developments — equally inherits the decades-old problems that have burdened previous incarnations of public housing agencies in T&T.
Debt and overwhelming demand have existed since the days of the now-defunct National Housing Authority (NHA).
Hansard records from the debate of the Housing Act 1962, which established the NHA, spoke of an entity that would “tackle with vigour some of the problems surrounding the housing situation, which happened to be one of the major social and economic problems” in the country.
More than six decades later, that promise remains unfulfilled.
The politicisation of public housing, for which successive governments must share the blame, has resulted in the total absence of transparency and accountability in allocating units.
The result is a situation where thousands have been waiting for as long as 25 years for government-subsidised housing, while thousands more rack up months and years of unpaid rent and mortgage.
There are also accounts of some HDC clients being allocated more than one subsidised apartment or house, then subletting those units in flagrant violation of their rental or rent-to-own agreements.
That is why, in addition to the ongoing debt collection drive, the HDC is also going after illegal occupants of its units.
Cleaning up this housing mess, accumulated over many decades and further complicated by political patronage and corruption, now falls under the portfolio of Housing and Urban Development Minister Camille Robinson-Regis, who has been talking tough about dealing with errant HDC tenants and driving down its mountain of debts.
It is a task that requires a level of political will, particularly with public housing, that has never before been displayed in this country.
Whether Minister Robinson-Regis and the new-look HDC are up to that Herculean task remains to be seen. However, T&T’s public housing problem needs to be tackled head-on, or it will continue to get worse.
At the same time, the many dimensions of this complex issue must be kept in focus.
The right to adequate housing is a human right that has not been adequately delivered to the many low- and middle-income citizens who cannot afford properties available on the private market.
That requires a new and enlightened approach to public housing minus the political patronage that has hampered the sector for too long.