HOME ownership is the dream of every individual or family and this is obvious because it is one of the three necessities of life – the others being food and clothing, and the advantages of having a home are numerous.

To begin with, owning a piece of land and a house is a life-long security and could be the stepping stone towards getting into other ventures because they (land, house, or both) could be used as security in obtaining finance from banks.
Also, home ownership relieves one of the financial stress of having to pay a rent, which in most cases takes a huge chunk from one’s income, apart from all other inconveniences.
However, home ownership for the wealthy is almost guaranteed because that class of people could easily afford to buy properties of their choice. On the other hand, for the working class and the less well to do, it is a difficult proposition and therefore they have to be facilitated and given help in order to own homes.
This is what the Government of Guyana, through the Ministry of Housing & Water, has been doing via its highly successful and much lauded housing programme.
In fact, the St. Vincent and Grenadines Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves, during his recent visit here, alluded to this and even concluded that Guyana’s housing developmental model should be emulated by our sister CARICOM countries.
The housing programme has been designed to cater for both low and high-income earners; and this is commendable because any housing programme worth its salt has to be affordable to all.
In addition, the banking sector has thrown its weight behind the housing programme by reducing lending rates and making it easier to obtain loans for housing purposes.
And more recently, the government has implemented a special mortgage relief package for first-time home owners who have loans of up to $30M.
At the Ministry of Housing and Water’s recent One Stop Shop exercise at the Guyana National Stadium, where some 1,600 persons received house lots, Mr. Irfaan Ali made some interesting and welcome disclosures.

He emphasised that it was “a strategic policy direction of the Government” to invest in housing for the improvement of people’s lives.
“We did not go and recreate this land. This land was there, but it is the policy that the government develops to improve the lives of its people that dictate how effective that government is…I think we have shown commitment and effectiveness in delivering housing and living solutions for families and people all across the country,” he stated.
The Housing Minister alluded to an important shift in the average age of land owners in Guyana, observing that, years ago, persons retired without owning their own homes, while the average land owner, these days, is well below 35 years.
He said a lot of work goes into making new housing schemes available to people, adding that this is being done by the staff of the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA) of the Housing Ministry.
He said the technical staff of CH&PA has been able to save the Government in excess of $3B in the last two years, because not a single consultant was hired to design, plan or supervise any of the works in the new housing schemes.
As regards the average land owner being 35 years, this is strikingly good news as it tells us that the young people of this country are benefiting immensely from the housing programme, something their predecessors did not benefit from because under the PNC government the housing programme was scrapped.
The housing programme would have been much more advanced but as President Donald Ramotar correctly recalled, when this government came into office in 1992, finance was scarce so not much money could have been invested in housing development. However, as the economy improved increasingly more investments have been made in this regard.
It may not be palatable to cynics among us, but the fact is our housing programme is a huge success and is continuing to move apace by leaps and bounds!