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On Budget Day, Housing Strategy Must Shift from Spending to Stewardship
Dear Editor,
Today is Budget Day. As the Finance Minister announces billions in new allocations for the housing sector, the nation is asked to accept expenditure as a proxy for success. However, after five years of record budgets and 53,000 announced allocations, the hard data forces a confrontation with a difficult truth: spending is not delivery.
The current housing model is failing to keep pace with reality. Official data confirms that despite billions spent since 2020, the backlog of applicants has grown to 78,000. Worse, of the 53,000 lots allocated, only about 4,000 new homes were completed, a real-world conversion rate of just 7.5%. A class of 28,000 “Paper Landlords” has been created; these citizens hold allocation letters but lack the titles to approach a bank or the infrastructure to build a home.
Solving this crisis requires more than pouring new revenue into a broken system. It demands a fundamental shift from a “Lot Allocation Model” to a “Stewardship Doctrine.” This approach recognises that land is a non-renewable national asset that must be managed for long-term sustainability rather than short-term political distribution.
A viable strategy for the new fiscal year requires the following pillars:
- The “Serviced-Land” Doctrine: The practice of allocating “bush” must end. A Certificate of Service Readiness should be a legal prerequisite for allocation. This ensures that no Guyanese is given a lot without the roads, water, and electricity needed to occupy it immediately, shifting the metric of success from “allocations” to “occupancy.”
- A Unified Beneficiary Registry: Housing assistance must be a right, not a lottery. Currently, delivery is fragmented across the Ministry, Men on Mission, and other ad-hoc initiatives. A single, statutory Unified Beneficiary Registry is required to prevent duplication, patronage, and the “Shadow Sector,” ensuring every citizen faces the same transparent process.
- “Keys-in-Hand” Financing: The gap between a $100,000 allocation fee and a $13 million construction cost is where the system fails the poor. A robust Rent-to-Own Scheme and low-interest construction financing must be introduced to bridge this gap. This ensures working-class families can convert an allocation into a home without falling into the “double-debt” trap of paying rent while paying for a lot.
- Accountability for Infrastructure: Recent oversight visits to Bartica, Lethem, and Mabaruma among other places, revealed a pattern of “Ghost Projects”, roads that fail within months and housing schemes overtaken by vegetation. A Housing Lifecycle Audit is necessary to mandate legally binding timelines for infrastructure completion, prohibiting the culture of spending without delivery.
Consequently, we intend to rigorously interrogate the housing sector’s estimates and expenditure in the 2026 Budget. The poor and working class depend on us to rationalise how these vast sums are spent and more importantly, to deliver homes. In this regard, we intend to make relevant policy prescriptions rooted not in abstract statistics, but in the lived experience of our people.
Sincerely,
Sherod Duncan, MP
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