Rent is now Mr. Rent

Feb 18, 2023 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – In the 1970’s, even the poorest of couples could find affordable housing in the city. The housing conditions may not have been the best but persons migrating from rural areas could always find a cheap place to rent since there was an abundance of flats, and always some family willing to take you in.

In the 1980’s, when the economy went into free fall, there was massive migration from the villages along the coast and from the countryside. Many young persons, including girls flocked to the city in search of employment opportunities.

They found housing difficult to obtain. Because of the hard times and high demand for urban housing, many landlords became unscrupulous. The practice of sub-letting became more pronounced. Owners of flats would rent out rooms at high premium of working boys and girls. The rent and food absorbed, in many cases, as much as 75% of their salaries, leaving very little for transportation and clothing and almost nothing to remit to their families in the villages and rural countryside. A great deal of exploitation took place.

 At the same time, there was high outward migration and the cost of real estate rose tremendously high, making home ownership selective. Some tenants could not meet their rentals and tied up landlords in court when notice was given for possession. As such, there was a reluctance to rent properties.

It was this shortage of housing unit and the rapid exploitation of the working class which led Cheddi Jagan to launch his government’s housing drive. The programme was supposed to be aimed primarily at low-income families. But the bourgeois class found ways to cash in and to use the programme to acquire further assets. There is well known story of a former engineer in the government who obtained house lots for himself and for each of his children.

Since the PPP/C (People’s Progressive Party Civic) has been in office, tens of thousands of house lots have been distributed. There is no reliable estimate of the total number of house lots distributed and the number of housing units established. But conservatively, it is estimated that the housing stock has increased by some 40,000 housing units.

This should have closed the gap between the demand for housing the housing stocks and led to steep decline in rentals. But the very opposite has happened. Thousands of Guyanese are still scampering to obtain government house lots and the cost of rentals has skyrocketed to the point where no young couple can afford housing rentals in Georgetown.

In colonial Guyana, times were tough for working class families. But you could still dream of, over time, of owning your own home in the city. Today it is impossible for a working-class person to dream about owning their own home within the city and even in sub-urban areas. The prices which land and buildings fetch are astonishing.

The bourgeois class is buying up all the real estate in the city and is converting these into commercial properties. This has artificially driven up the price of land and putting it even out of the reach of the middle class.

 It is now also almost impossible for low-income earners to find affordable decent housing in the city. Rents have gone through the roof and part of problem has been the conversion of residential residences into business premises. This means that there are less units available for rental.

With more and more businesses being established and with the centralization of businesses in urban areas, the possibility of finding, much less affording, an apartment in the city is small and the situation is not much better in sub-urban areas.

 In government housing schemes, there is not much rental taking place. Homeowners are not necessarily disposed towards having tenants as much as in the past. Despite the tens of thousands of housing units erected in government housing schemes, there is still an acute shortage of apartments and flats to rent and those available for rentals are fetching a fortune which is out of the reach of ordinary citizens.

 All of this is happening at a time when there is a lack of economic opportunities in rural communities. And so many young persons are looking for work in the urban centers and the new commercial and industrial areas which are developing along the coast. But where will these young people find affordable and decent rentals? It is simply not there, one of the paradoxes of the government’s housing drive.

The government seems to be addressing housing needs only through the distribution of house lots. They do not seem to understand that equally important is ensuring sufficient and affordable rentals. Until such time as government begins to limit commercial development in urban areas and until they also stop allowing the establishment of commercial businesses in residential areas, and until they take deliberate steps to drive down the cost of rentals, the poor will continue to be locked out of economic opportunities.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

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• Cheddi Jagan, countryside, Peeping Tom, People’s Progressive Party Civic, Rent

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