Lee An­na Ma­haraj

A to­tal of 25 fam­i­lies yes­ter­day re­ceived keys to their homes from the Min­istry of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment, as part of its Hous­ing and Vil­lage Im­prove­ment Pro­gramme (HVIP).

The ex­er­cise took place at the San­gre Grande Civic Cen­tre in San­gre Grande and could not have come at a bet­ter time for Vhool­mat­tee Singh, a for­mer res­i­dent of Va­len­cia. Singh was par­tic­u­lar­ly hap­py and re­lieved be­cause she was al­most a vic­tim of a vi­o­lent crime.

“I’m feel­ing very hap­py be­cause my house was a bro­ken-down house and I was liv­ing among ban­dits, and (now] I’m more se­cure,” she said.

Singh said an­oth­er per­son in the Va­len­cia area had tried to harm her but her neigh­bours thank­ful­ly in­ter­vened and as­sist­ed her with ac­quir­ing a home.

“My neigh­bours found out and they got in­to con­tact with the Land Set­tle­ment Agency (LSA) on my be­half,” she added.

John Her­nan­dez, a 60-year-old who wait­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly two years to re­ceive this op­por­tu­ni­ty, thanked the min­is­ters and of­fi­cials who as­sist­ed him in se­cur­ing his new home, which he is hop­ing to move in­to soon with his com­mon-law wife.

“I just want to say thanks to every­body. I will en­joy my home and hope­ful­ly, be­fore Christ­mas, I want to move in,” he said.

While some re­cip­i­ents are still await­ing the com­ple­tion of their new homes, oth­ers have al­ready moved in and be­gun ex­pand­ing.

“Right now, I am adding on­to the house so my kids and they could come over, so I’m thank­ful and I wish every­body would do the same be­cause it’s a start,” said Au­drey Ec­tor, a for­mer res­i­dent of Windy Hill, Arou­ca.

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment, Adri­an Leonce, spoke on be­half of Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, who was un­able to at­tend due to a med­ical emer­gency.

Leonce as­sured the pub­lic that the min­istry will con­tin­ue to dis­trib­ute homes to those in need.

“These 25 starter homes were con­struct­ed across the To­co/San­gre Grande area at a cost of $145,000 per unit. In to­tal, that is $3.6 mil­lion your Gov­ern­ment has in­vest­ed in you. The cer­e­mo­ny to­day gives us a chance to take stock of our achieve­ments in pro­tect­ing so­ci­ety’s most vul­ner­a­ble mem­bers,” Leonce said.

“It al­so en­cour­ages us to re­new our com­mit­ment and step up our ef­forts to en­sure that every fam­i­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go has a gen­uine op­por­tu­ni­ty to ac­cess af­ford­able and de­cent hous­ing, as en­vi­sioned in the Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Strat­e­gy, in line with the Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals of the Unit­ed Na­tions. We are go­ing to be de­liv­er­ing to many, many more over the com­ing weeks and months ahead. Our goal is to en­hance rather than wors­en the lives of those who are most at risk in our so­ci­ety.”

Leonce al­so re­mind­ed the re­cip­i­ents of the le­gal re­quire­ments they must ful­fil.

“You will be get­ting 30 years to pay 40 per cent of the mar­ket val­ue of the land you oc­cu­py un­der the statu­to­ry lease. Fol­low­ing this, you will re­ceive your deed of lease. The deed of lease for 199 years is the fi­nal step in the reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion process but it is the first step in cre­at­ing gen­er­a­tional wealth for your chil­dren and grand­chil­dren, as you will be able to pass the prop­er­ty on from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion,” he added.

San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Anil Juter­am con­grat­u­lat­ed the re­cip­i­ents and en­cour­aged them to ex­pand their new homes.