Guyana’s housing programme has failed the poor

Jun 28, 2026 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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(Kaieteur News) – For decades, Guyanese have been told that the government’s housing programme represents one of the country’s greatest social achievements. House lot distribution has been celebrated as proof of development, empowerment and progress.

Yet a closer examination of the numbers reveals a troubling question: if so, many lots have been distributed over the past three decades, why does Guyana still have tens of thousands of housing applicants waiting for land?

The figures are staggering.

In its 2006 manifesto, the PPP/C boasted that it had distributed 70,000 house lots since taking office in 1992. Subsequent reports suggest that another 45,000 lots were distributed between 2006 and 2015. The PPPC said that the APNU+AFC administration distributed approximately 7,000 lots between 2015 and 2020. Since returning to office in 2020, the PPP/C has stated that it has distributed more than 50,000 additional lots.

Taken together, these figures amount to approximately 172,000 house lots distributed since 1992.

The irony is impossible to ignore. When the PPP/C entered office in 1992, Guyana already possessed an estimated housing stock of roughly 150,000 units. If homes had been constructed on the overwhelming majority of the 172,000 lots subsequently distributed, the country would today possess a housing stock exceeding 320,000 units. With an average household size of four persons, such a stock would theoretically accommodate more than 1.3 million people, far more than Guyana’s current population.

Yet the government now speaks of some 81,000 housing applications.

Something does not add up.

The obvious conclusion is that the housing programme has not functioned primarily as a mechanism to provide shelter to the homeless or land to the landless. Instead, it has increasingly become a vehicle for speculation, accumulation and privilege.

For years, Guyanese have witnessed the reality with their own eyes. Drive through many housing schemes developed during the past three decades and one encounters not modest starter homes but sprawling mansions and luxury residences occupying lands originally intended to advance social development. Entire communities emerged in which the beneficiaries were not the poor and vulnerable but members of the expanding middle and upper classes.

The programme ceased being about housing and became about asset acquisition.

Many Guyanese still recall the chaotic “One-Stop Shop” exercises in which allocations appeared to be made at remarkable speed. Stories circulated of individuals arriving with large sums of money and walking away with allocations while questions lingered about whether adequate verification had been conducted. Were previous ownership records properly checked? Were beneficiaries screened to ensure they genuinely needed assistance? Were multiple allocations prevented?

The perception that the system has been abused is reinforced by stories that have circulated for years about individuals and families allegedly obtaining multiple house lots through various means. One allegation that has been repeatedly mentioned is that a now-deceased engineer was able to secure house lots for each of his four children at around the same time.

Even if this is part of the rumour mill, the point is that the persistence of such stories reflects a widespread public belief that the system was vulnerable to manipulation and that some beneficiaries were able to obtain advantages unavailable to ordinary applicants. These are precisely the kinds of claims that a comprehensive audit should investigate. If they are false, they should be disproved. If they are true, then appropriate action should be taken, including repossession where contractual conditions were violated.

Indeed, one of the worst-kept secrets in Guyana is the secondary market that emerged around government-issued house lots. Lands acquired at subsidized rates frequently found their way into private transactions worth millions of dollars, often through irrevocable powers of attorney and other arrangements designed to circumvent restrictions. The result was that public assets became instruments of private profit.

In effect, taxpayers subsidised speculation.

The tragedy is that while the well-connected accumulated assets, many poor Guyanese remained excluded. Grand visions such as Silica City may appeal to the rich and super -rich but they do little for families struggling to afford basic housing.

This is why Guyana does not need another massive house lot distribution campaign.

The country does not suffer from a shortage of distributed land. What is urgently needed is a comprehensive national audit of every lot distributed over the past three decades. The authorities should identify persons who obtained allocations contrary to policy, would have previously owned property, acquired multiple subsidised properties, failed to develop allotted lands within required periods, or otherwise breached the conditions of their agreements with the Central Housing and Planning Authority.

Where contractual breaches are discovered, repossession should follow.

Public lands are not family inheritances. They are national assets intended to advance social justice. Every improperly held lot represents a lost opportunity for a young family, a single parent or a low-income household seeking a place to call home.

The housing programme has long outlived its usefulness in its current form. Rather than continuing a cycle that rewards speculation and privilege, Guyana should focus on restoring greater public confidence in the system.

The goal should not be distributing more lots. The goal should be ensuring that public resources reach the people for whom they were originally intended.

Until that happens, the housing programme will remain a symbol of how public policy can enrich the fortunate while marginalising the poor.

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

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• Housing Programme, Peeping Tom, poor, PPP/C

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