As of April, a to­tal of $241.7 mil­lion in ar­rears was owed to the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) by ten­ants.

The av­er­age month­ly col­lec­tion for the last nine months since evic­tions be­gan was ap­prox­i­mate­ly $6 mil­lion. Ar­rears owed by ten­ants ranged from two and a half years at $45,700 to sev­en years for a ten­ant ow­ing $128,000 in rent. Hous­ing Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is gave the in­for­ma­tion in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day fol­low­ing ques­tions from Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark.

Robin­son-Reg­is said evic­tions by the HDC were not sud­den. She said, “The HDC has ad­hered to a struc­tured and trans­par­ent process, en­sur­ing that ten­ants re­ceive am­ple no­tice and mul­ti­ple op­por­tu­ni­ties to ad­dress their ar­rears be­fore any evic­tion oc­curs.”

She added, “This mea­sure is nec­es­sary to re­cov­er un­paid rent, to­talling $241,732,461.88, to pre­vent the ex­ploita­tion of state re­sources that have been al­lo­cat­ed to pro­vide af­ford­able hous­ing to those in great­est need.” Robin­son-Reg­is de­tailed ar­rears owed by cat­e­gories of ten­ants as of April 30, 2024:

· ↓For rent-to-own (RTO) units: $2,105,914.32;

· ↓For peo­ple in the Li­cence to Oc­cu­py (LTO) Units: $91,478,355.66;

· For rental units: $76,745,383.79;

· ↓For in-house mort­gage units: $67,712,621.19;

· ↓For com­mer­cial prop­er­ties: $3,690,186.92

Robin­son-Reg­is said that even though the HDC es­tab­lish­es a time­line for col­lec­tion, in many in­stances, this doesn’t oc­cur.

“In most in­stances, HDC, be­cause of its so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, tries to be as le­nient as pos­si­ble with ten­ants. We do recog­nise the co­hort of cit­i­zens that we’re deal­ing with, so it takes a very long time be­fore the HDC will sub­mit to hav­ing some­one evict­ed.

“But you do recog­nise that $241 mil­lion be­ing owed to the State in cir­cum­stances where we’re try­ing to pro­vide hous­ing for the peo­ple makes it very dif­fi­cult for the HDC as a state agency to op­er­ate. Con­se­quent­ly, the de­ci­sion was tak­en that we have to act, and there are many peo­ple on the data­base who are will­ing to take these units and pay the req­ui­site rent,” she added.

Since its in­cep­tion in 2005, Robin­son-Reg­is said, the HDC has pri­mar­i­ly evict­ed il­le­gal oc­cu­pants of units be­cause of il­le­gal oc­cu­pan­cy or ar­rears on rentals. The Min­is­ter added, “In 2024, there were 23 evic­tions—five of them for il­le­gal oc­cu­pan­cy, 17 for ar­rears, and one for sub­let­ting. From the 394 evic­tions con­duct­ed over 2009 to 2024, some 376 were for il­le­gal oc­cu­pan­cy. From 2024, evic­tions have com­menced for ar­rears and for sub­let­ting.”

Robin­son-Reg­is said the col­lec­tion dri­ve has yield­ed sig­nif­i­cant re­sults, with $9 mil­lion col­lect­ed so far from er­rant ten­ants.

HDC evic­tions:

2009–18 evic­tions,

2010–20,

2011–28,

2012–33,

2013–45,

2015–8,

2016–15,

2017–80,

2018–14,

2019–90,

2022–13,

2023–7

No in­for­ma­tion was pro­vid­ed for 2014, 2020, or 2021.