50-50 is really 50-25

Mar 01, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The Department of Housing has a new promotion, the second one it has announced so far. Under this new promotion if by May 1, you have already paid fifty per cent of the cost of your house lot, then you will get a 50% reduction on the remaining balance, but payment has to be made by the end of May 2016.
In other words if by the start of May you would have owed the Central Housing and Planning Authority fifty per cent of the cost of your house lot, then you can get a 25% reduction off of the original cost of the lot but you have to pay off the other 25% by the end of the month.
This may seem to be a good deal but it is not as rosy as it seems. Let us suppose that you purchased a house lot from the government for two million dollars and you paid down $500,000 to the Ministry. This means that you owe another $ 1,500,000. In order to benefit from the new promotion you will have to find by May 1, another $500,000 plus a further $500,000 in one month’s time.
This means that within a short period you will have to find one million dollars to pay down to the CH&PA before you can benefit from the new promotion.
A great many homeowners cannot do that because many banks are not prepared to accept a letter of assurance from the CH&PA. The banks want the transport and this is why many persons have been unable to pay off the CH&PA. They have been unable to do so because they are unable to secure a loan from the banks to pay for their house lot.
It is not going to be easy at all for a small man to find all this money, then to find money to build a house immediately so as to avoid the CHPA from “repossessing” their lot.
In a country which has one of the lowest population densities in the world, the CH&PA is claiming that there is little land to give to persons wanting new house lots.
This is the excuse that is being used in a country where land is plenty and which if offering land to Caribbean countries to come and invest.
There is no need for mass repossession of lots for those who have not yet built. The PPP was not into mass repossession of house lots. They wanted people to own their own home.
The PPP allowed for house lot owners to pay in installments. The PPP was not eager to take away people’s house lots because the PPP understood that some people simply cannot find the money to pay off for their land and then secure a loan to build the house.
A lot of those persons who voted APNU+AFC into power were able to own their own homes because of the PPP.
The new government is saying that people are speculating on their land. But how many people are doing this? There are persons who simply cannot build as yet because they are still repaying for the land. They are being threatened with having their lots repossessed.
Any repossession has to be by a civil process and its most likely that the courts will interpret the provisions of the contract signed between the CH&PA and the house lot owner in favor of the owner and will allow that person more time.
Another issue is how fair is this new fifty-fifty promotion to those who have paid off for their house lots. Are they going to get a refund of 25% of the amount they have paid?
This is the unfairness of the promotion. It rewards those who are in default and excludes those who paid their indebtedness to the CH&PA. But this is how the APNU+AFC government is conceiving the policy.
The first promotion that was announced suffered from the same flaw. It offered to give to 50 homeowners a cash grant of $300,000 to do renovation. But why give someone who already has built his or her home a grant of $300,000. Why not use that same money and raffle for five free house lots?
The government did not state how it will select the lucky fifty persons.

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50-50 is really 50-25

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