The hous­ing sec­tor has re­ceived a sig­nif­i­cant drop in bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion com­pared to the last fis­cal year, with $662 mil­lion ($0.62 bil­lion) be­ing made avail­able to the sec­tor for de­vel­op­ment and oth­er ex­pens­es.

How­ev­er, sev­er­al ma­jor plans are on the hori­zon, in­clud­ing the cre­ation of 20,000 af­ford­able homes and first-time home­own­er grants.

In fis­cal 2025, the Min­istry of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment re­ceived an al­lo­ca­tion of $1,284,983,000.

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta com­piled in a re­port by the Fi­nan­cial Scruti­ny Unit of the Par­lia­ment, al­lo­ca­tions to the Min­istry of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment fluc­tu­at­ed with de­clines and in­creas­es be­tween 2018 to 2024.

One of these in­creas­es in al­lo­ca­tions were record­ed be­tween the pe­ri­od 2022/2023 to 2023/2024, when a 0.47 per cent in­crease was ob­served from $675,794,774 to $948,564,085.

Dur­ing his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion on Mon­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo de­scribed hous­ing as a so­cial ne­ces­si­ty and an eco­nom­ic dri­ver, not­ing that he an­tic­i­pat­ed a dou­bling in the num­ber of home im­prove­ment grants to be de­liv­ered.

He al­so said that 1,461 hous­ing units were al­ready un­der con­struc­tion in Ari­ma, D'Abadie, and Cou­va, while 35 Hous­ing and Vil­lage Im­prove­ment Pro­gramme (HVIP) projects were com­plet­ed, with 44 more un­der­way.

Tan­coo al­so out­lined some of the Gov­ern­ment's goals for the up­com­ing fis­cal year.

"Our am­bi­tious tar­get is to pro­vide 20,000 af­ford­able homes through PPPs and in­no­v­a­tive de­signs. We will launch first-time home own­er grants, low in­ter­est loans for young fam­i­lies, and re­vive the land for the land­less pro­gramme.

"The foun­da­tion for life pro­gramme will help sin­gle moth­ers and se­niors with rent-to-own op­tions, while in­clu­sive hous­ing at Ed­in­burgh 500 will serve peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties."

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia as he en­tered the Low­er House be­fore yes­ter­day's Bud­get Pre­sen­ta­tion, Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee said he has been work­ing with Tan­coo and Min­is­ter of Plan­ning Kennedy Swarats­ingh in ac­cess­ing loan fa­cil­i­ties.

He al­so said he is ded­i­cat­ed to pro­vid­ing hous­ing on a long-term ba­sis.

"What we are try­ing to cre­ate is a vil­lage-type life com­mu­ni­ty. We have no­ticed a lot of peo­ple want sin­gle-fam­i­ly units, as op­posed to the apart­ment-style liv­ing, and we will just have to look at the land al­lo­ca­tion. In­stead of 5000 square feet, we will have to re­duce that to maybe 3,500 square feet, so maybe we can ac­co­mo­date much more sin­gle-fam­i­ly hous­es."

In May, one month af­ter the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ elec­tion vic­to­ry, Min­is­ter of Hous­ing David Lee was re­port­ed as say­ing that he al­ready be­gan to as­sess the coun­try's avail­able hous­ing units while al­so iden­ti­fy­ing fund­ing for new projects from the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC).

Lee was quot­ed as say­ing that he was con­fi­dent the new projects would "come on board" when the new bud­get was called.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment di­rec­tor of Habi­tat for Hu­man­i­ty, Jen­nifer Mas­sa­iah, said she wasn't sur­prised in the drop in al­lo­ca­tion to hous­ing, but not­ed that it demon­strat­ed the need for more cross-sec­tor part­ner­ships.

"It cer­tain­ly does al­low a call-to-ac­tion with the pri­vate sec­tor, civ­il so­ci­ety and the gov­ern­ment to ad­dress the is­sue of hous­ing, $662 mil­lion is not bad but it's not suif­fi­cient for the hous­ing need that we have, but we have to look at shel­ter in the more holis­tic ca­pac­i­ty, we have to look not just at the phys­i­cal struc­ture of hous­ing, but we have to look at our hous­ing poli­cies and we al­so need to look at the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties of the poor­est of the poor which points to land is­sues."

Re­spond­ing to Lee's com­ments about the Gov­ern­ment's in­ten­tion to fo­cus on sin­gle-fam­i­ly units ver­sus apart­ment com­plex­es, Mas­sa­iah said the avail­abil­i­ty of land could be a lim­it­ing fac­tor in this ap­proach.

"I'm think­ing the min­is­ter re­al­ly needs to look at land as a fi­nite re­source and starter homes on sin­gle plots of land need to be re-looked, be­cause even­tu­al­ly we won't have enough land for every­body who needs hous­ing.

"So starter homes are good, but I'm al­so think­ing the min­is­ter should al­so look at the whole is­sue of do­ing du­plex­es, mul­ti-storey com­plex­es, be­cause there are a lot of peo­ple out there who need hous­ing."

Al­lo­ca­tion to the Min­istry of Hous­ing over the years:

￭ For Fis­cal 2026, the Min­istry was al­lo­cat­ed $662,000,000

￭ For Fis­cal 2025, the Min­istry was al­lo­cat­ed $1,284,983,000

￭ For Fis­cal 2024, the Min­istry was al­lo­cat­ed $948,564,085

￭ For Fis­cal 2023, the Min­istry was al­lo­cat­ed $675,794,774

￭ For Fis­cal 2022, the Min­istry was al­lo­cat­ed $844,734,011

￭ For Fis­cal 2021, the Min­istry was al­lo­cat­ed $769,761,653

￭ For Fis­cal 2020, the Min­istry was al­lo­cat­ed $1,410,694,900

￭ For Fis­cal 2019, the Min­istry was al­lo­cat­ed $1,471,359,183