Government should never get into the business of building homes

Mar 23, 2021 Letters

Dear Editor

Kaieteur News – Government should never get into the business of building homes for residents and I make this bold statement based on the clear fact that the new homeowners soon forget that they have to repay the housing authorities. The homeowner very easily forgets that he has to service his loans and goes on these years of default on their payments with no care in the world. This has been a bugbear for the governments and the public housing sector on a whole.
I know that I may come across as being overly harsh but the reality of the situation is that most homeowners simply default on their payments as governments are left with the harsh reality of picking up the tabs left by the defaulters. We also have an additional burden of political parties who exploit the situation for their own narrow political gains. Because some political parties in their usual belligerent fashion, exacerbate the problem with the associated racial overtones. They will make out a case that a certain racial group is deliberately denied access to affordable housing. So, this is the real life situation that we have to face up to.
The provision of affordable housing to citizens is not a new phenomenon in Guyana, we have gone through this phase before and the lessons learnt from pass experiences should guide us into the future. What I am saying is that middle to low income homeowners have as their main objective the business of gaining access into the homes built by the state, after that the problem of servicing the loans becomes a huge problem.
The situation becomes even murkier when there are multiple occupants in a single home (I call it the mini-bus syndrome) with no one attempting to take responsibility for servicing the loan. It gets even worse when the signatory to the loan dies or in some cases happens to move abroad, then no one takes responsibility for payment. In the meantime the property goes into disrepair. These are the glaring realities that governments have to face up to in the housing sector.
If you ask me for candid advice on housing, I would readily settle for government providing the basic infrastructure such as roads, electricity and potable water among other necessities like security and primary healthcare. But providing homes for them should be definitely off the radar.
I hope the authorities in the Ministry of Housing take the following recommendations into consideration, because it would definitely go a far way in the avoidance of the pitfalls that lie ahead.
Yours truly,
Neil Adams

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Government should never get into the business of building homes

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