– Director of CH&PA

By Rabindra Rooplall
THERE is need for a comprehensive assessment of the housing sector to guide future programmes, the chief executive officer of the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA) has said.In the absence of appropriate and comprehensive data, she said decision- making has had to be reactive when it should be planned and proactive; investments are already susceptible to inefficiency and uncoordinated planning can affect optimisation of the investments.
“Therefore, there is a need for a comprehensive assessment of the housing sector to help to identify bottlenecks, gaps, opportunities that can be derived and provide a sound basis for the formulation of future plans,” Pitt stated.
She was speaking at a consultative workshop for a National Housing Profile for Guyana held at Cara Lodge, Georgetown,on Thursday.
She said a housing-sector profile can accommodate a comprehensive review of the current housing delivery system, which can make recommendations for more effective housing programmes, since the key objectives of the central authority are to ensure inclusive rights- based, gender- based, well-serviced, demand-driven affordable housing and a sustainable housing delivery mechanism for persons of primarily low and moderate incomes.
“In our initial contact with UNDP (United Nations Development Programme), we were bedevilled with the lack of current data, statistics that are vital for proper analysis and assessment of the sector, since decision-making should be data driven if proper assessment is to be carried out and appropriate policies are to be formulated to address the problems in the sector,” she noted.
The housing sector remains a key area of focus in the continuing drive to alleviate poverty and improve the quality of life of low and moderate- income groups. The vision is to provide mainly low and moderate- income Guyanese the opportunity to have decent and affordable shelter in communities that are cohesive, well planned and the basis of good, healthy living.
“This vision has to be translated through the realisation of key policies and the execution of projects to meet the shelter needs of the population,” Ms Pitt explained. “Government currently faces considerable public pressure to continue to expand housing over the medium term.”
She said a specific analysis of the sector reveals a broad set of challenges, many of which interlock with others, that is, they form a constellation of inter-related factors that are best addressed in a comprehensive manner. These include: substantial unmet housing demand and supply, infrastructural backlogs and declining infrastructural service levels owing to inadequate maintenance.
The CH&PA official said at the global level the government’s housing programme embraces the framework of the United Nations global housing strategy and follows the guiding principles of the human rights-based approach to settlement development.
Adding that the housing sector is now aligned with the national poverty reduction strategy, Ms Pitt said over the years various issues such as affordability, adequacy of housing, infrastructural deficiencies, increase in household formation and deteriorating housing stock have evolved as issues that need to be addressed in attempting to find solutions for the sector.
She said that the question of affordability reveals that many households cannot afford decent housing. Ms Pitt pointed out that the housing stock continues to deteriorate and in this scenario, opportunities exist for the expansion of the housing market, expansion of Public/ Private Partnerships and a more enhanced framework for better coordination for the planning and implementation of human settlements.
In addition, she said there is need for decentralisation in light of local authorities becoming more efficient with capacity-building at the level of communities, local and regional authorities and the stimulation of further research on issues in the housing sector.
She said that there is need for examination of the relationship between informal and formal- sector credit systems in financing housing initiatives in the low-income group, along with analysis of the role of housing in reducing poverty in Guyana and contributing to sustainability.
Asserting that options for private-sector roles in housing development and conducting a critical appraisal of the regulatory framework is needed, Ms Pitt explained that for the implementation and management of private sector- led housing development initiatives, there is need to increase choices available to consumers.
This, she said, will result in the participation of stakeholders and consumers to guide decision- making in the housing sector and new approaches to accelerate sustainable housing production, which includes the use of alternative building materials and systems with the identification of global best practices that can be considered for replication.