There are a num­ber of breach­es at the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion's Orop­une Gar­dens de­vel­op­ment in Pi­ar­co, hence the evic­tion of a ten­ant who was op­er­at­ing a hard­ware and com­mer­cial shop there ear­ly Wednes­day.

In a re­lease, HDC Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Brent Lyons said it was dur­ing a vis­it there with ex­ec­u­tives on Sat­ur­day that they saw and con­firmed the ex­is­tence of re­port­ed home­own­er in­frac­tions and breach­es and de­cid­ed to act on them im­me­di­ate­ly.

Dur­ing their vis­it, the HDC team spoke di­rect­ly with the res­i­dents who were in breach of the home­own­er rules and ad­vised them "to treat with the sit­u­a­tion be­fore the HDC has to re­sort to its fi­nal po­si­tion of de­mo­li­tion and/or evic­tion."

The re­lease stat­ed that let­ters were al­so rou­tine­ly is­sued to many of the res­i­dents re­it­er­at­ing the HDC’s po­si­tion.

Cur­rent­ly, busi­ness­man An­tho­ny Knights, pop­u­lar­ly known as One Foot, is be­ing evict­ed by HDC of­fi­cials and the po­lice.

At his apart­ment at Build­ing 3A, Knights op­er­at­ed Sin­gles Con­struc­tion Hard­ware along with a com­mer­cial shop. How­ev­er, HDC of­fi­cials moved in ear­ly Wednes­day morn­ing and de­mol­ished the struc­ture where Knights was op­er­at­ing the busi­ness­es.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Knights ad­mit­ted he was giv­en sev­er­al warn­ings be­fore, along with an evic­tion no­tice.

Knights, who is an am­putee, said he has been liv­ing there for eight years and re­cent­ly held a meet­ing with Lyons.

He said he is the fa­ther if four chil­dren and was on­ly try­ing to earn an hon­est liv­ing.

The re­lease "af­ter en­sur­ing that due process was fol­lowed, the HDC’s Se­cu­ri­ty De­part­ment with sup­port from the TT Po­lice Ser­vice, went to Orop­une Gar­dens to be­gin the re­moval of il­le­gal struc­tures with­in the com­mu­ni­ty, be­gin­ning with a pop­u­lar hard­ware and 'lim­ing spot.’"

Over the past year, the HDC said it had ob­served and had been tak­ing note of the ma­jor breach­es made with­in this com­mu­ni­ty and has urged all those who are in breach and those who would have pre­vi­ous­ly re­ceived cor­re­spon­dence to do the right thing and rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion be­fore the HDC takes fur­ther ac­tion.

How­ev­er, the HDC con­tin­ues to un­der­score that the prob­lems fac­ing Orop­une Gar­dens re­quire a mul­ti-agency, mul­ti-pronged ap­proach to ar­rive at a res­o­lu­tion.

"We are com­mit­ted to treat­ing with all is­sues which fall un­der our re­mit and wel­come the co­op­er­a­tion of oth­er agen­cies to re­solve is­sues which are out­side of our re­mit and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty."