KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Fif­teen years af­ter the Hous­ing and De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) be­gan build­ing the Ed­in­burgh Tow­ers in Ch­agua­nas, the Gov­ern­ment now hopes to com­plete the project by ear­ly 2022.

Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Pen­ne­lope Beck­les an­nounced the re­sump­tion of the project as she dis­trib­uted keys to new home­own­ers at River­side North in Corinth yes­ter­day. 

Con­struc­tion of the Ed­in­burgh Tow­ers start­ed in 2006 at a cost of $140 mil­lion but stalled in 2011 due to de­sign flaws and miss­ing ap­provals.

In 2015, the then Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, es­ti­mat­ed that it would cost about $200 mil­lion to re­design and com­plete con­struc­tion of the two aban­doned apart­ment tow­ers.

A 2018 re­port al­so stat­ed that the tow­ers were ini­tial­ly pegged at $57 mil­lion but in­curred a mas­sive $87.7 mil­lion in vari­a­tion. By 2011, the build­ings were still with­out statu­to­ry ap­provals from the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion, Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty, T&T Fire Ser­vice and the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion. In fact, at one point the rec­om­men­da­tion was to scrap the project be­cause it was too ex­pen­sive to com­plete.

HDC chair­man Noel Gar­cia yes­ter­day said there were sev­er­al is­sues re­gard­ing the tow­er, in­clud­ing the struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty. Af­ter an analy­sis, he said en­gi­neers gave the HDC clear­ance to pro­ceed. 

“At that time, we were get­ting a cost of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $700,000 per unit to fin­ish, which worked out to be some­where in the vicin­i­ty of $850 mil­lion. Through the ef­forts of HDC and col­lab­o­ra­tion with the small and medi­um-sized con­trac­tors, we have gone out for com­pet­i­tive bid­ding and we an­tic­i­pate to bring each one of those units at a fi­nal cost of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $475,000,” Gar­cia said.

Last year, the HDC ini­ti­at­ed a three-stage process for com­plet­ing the works on the Ed­in­burgh Tow­ers, of which two stages are cur­rent­ly in progress and ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by June 2021. Once com­plet­ed, the two 10-storey apart­ment build­ings will have an ex­pect­ed yield of 140 apart­ments. Gar­cia and Beck­les said the HDC got the nec­es­sary ap­provals.

Beck­les said the HDC will hire spe­cial­ist con­trac­tors for the com­mon work. Con­trac­tors out of the Small & Medi­um Con­trac­tors (SMC) Project pool will com­plete the out­fit­ting work.

De­spite the sig­nif­i­cant cost over­runs ac­cu­mu­lat­ed on the project, Gar­cia said it should cost suc­cess­ful ap­pli­cants around $475,000 for the two and three-bed­room units. He said this should cater to peo­ple earn­ing a month­ly salary of be­tween $5,000-$9,000. Gar­cia al­so said the HDC does not con­sid­er the project a fi­nan­cial loss, as the aim is to pro­vide af­ford­able hous­ing to low-in­come earn­ers. The HDC an­tic­i­pates ap­pli­cants can ac­quire these homes on a rent-to-own pay­ment plan, with the two-bed­room units cost­ing $1,200 and the three-bed­room, $1,500 per month.

“The orig­i­nal plan was to have it com­plet­ed and put on the open mar­ket for sale. But as the Min­is­ter said, the Gov­ern­ment’s fo­cus is on af­ford­able hous­ing reach­ing that class of work­ers or clients, who fall in­to that brack­et of be­tween $5,000-$9,000 per month,” Gar­cia said.

Beck­les said the Gov­ern­ment re­alised some peo­ple could not pay a mort­gage as eas­i­ly as oth­ers and the HDC’s fo­cus on low-in­come earn­ers was in keep­ing with the Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy. 

“You would have heard the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounce in the bud­get state­ment about a greater fo­cus on what you call af­ford­able hous­ing. In my speech, I al­so spoke about us try­ing to com­plete sev­er­al un­fin­ished projects,” she said.

Beck­les said based on the min­istry’s analy­sis of the da­ta they col­lect­ed, it re­alised that the ma­jor­i­ty of clients fall with­in the month­ly salary range of $5,000-$9,000, adding the min­istry has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ad­dress the cit­i­zens’ needs. She said al­so many com­plain about the lengthy wait­ing time for pub­lic hous­ing.

Two weeks ago, Beck­les vis­it­ed Al­mond Court in Mor­vant, an­oth­er con­struc­tion site left in abeyance. The HDC be­gan con­struct­ing 96 units there around 2005 and like Ed­in­burgh Tow­er, it ran in­to prob­lems. How­ev­er, Gar­cia said the HDC had re­solved those is­sues and is ac­tive­ly ne­go­ti­at­ing with the orig­i­nal con­trac­tor to re­sume work in Ju­ly. 

He said the av­er­age mort­gage ranges be­tween $3,500-$3,800, which may be too cost­ly for those in the $5,000-$9,000 month­ly salary range. There­fore, the HDC is re­fo­cus­ing its ef­forts to meet the needs of the low­er-in­come earn­ers.

He said the HDC con­tin­ues to urge cus­tomers to pay their rent or mort­gages so it can get mon­ey for main­te­nance and new projects. Gar­cia said there was an in­crease in ten­ants con­vert­ing their Rent-to-Own and Li­cense-to-Own plans to mort­gages. He said that those con­ver­sions help the HDC pay its small and medi­um-sized con­trac­tors and some larg­er con­trac­tors.