CABINET has approved the construction of 758 housing units in Regions Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven and 10 at a cost of $5B to provide low-income earners, young people and public-sector families with affordable housing. Each dwelling unit will cost approximately $5.4M.Minister of State, Joseph Harmon, told reporters at a post-Cabinet press briefing on Friday that approximately 1500 persons will be shortlisted for duplexes and town house units. He said the project will start almost immediately and is expected to be completed in 12 months.
“The important distinction that we want to make is that we are not just issuing house lots. We are building homes within communities for the citizens of this country,” the Minister of State said, while noting that the first batch of recipients will be selected from over 25,000 housing applications currently in the system.
“This is the initial phase and over the next two years, we’d be rolling out housing developments and communities and several other communities of Guyana,” he added, while noting that the Ministry of Communities will elaborate more on the project soon. Meanwhile, he announced that Cabinet has received the 2014 audited report of the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA) and said that the report will be tabled in the National Assembly.
The Guyana Chronicle reported on Friday that the Ministry of Communities will be commencing the construction of approximately 60 duplex apartments in the mining town of Linden. The construction, which would commence by April,will see the provision of apartments going to 120 applicants who have reached the age of 21. According to Minister within the Ministry of Communities, Valerie Patterson, priority will be given to state employees, young professionals and middle- income earners.
The price has not yet been set, but the minister revealed that it will be around $5-7 M. The duplexes will be constructed of timber and concrete. There are three sets of duplexes to meet the needs of the various applicants. “We will be having the two flats side by side with a common wall, which will be sound proof and then we will have the duplex on stilt, which means that you can enclose your downstairs if you want and then the next will be top and bottom enclosed, everybody will have their own yard space, so we are doing timber and we are doing concrete in the same design,” Patterson revealed.
The duplexes will be constructed in Amelia’s Ward and while the area has already been reserved, the ministry will now be moving towards allocation, since cabinet has given approval for same. An exhibition of the models of the duplexes will be held soon and the minister said that competitive bidding will be done for contractors who have prequalified. She added that the venture will not be a profit-making one for the Government but in fact, the Government will be subsidising the construction of these homes.
Patterson said that she along with her team were prompted to undertake this project, given the demand for turnkey homes not only in Linden, but countrywide, which their research saw approximately 8500 individuals expressing serious interest. “We are looking at density, because where you have one plot of land, you can only put one house to house one family; you can use the same plot of land to put a duplex to house two families, if you have a particular area and initially you could have only put 20 houses, you can now house 40 families instead with the duplexes. It also drives infrastructure cost down, because if you put a road, you can only have let’s say 10 houses on one and 10 on the other; you can now have 20 on one side and 20 on the other, so it is maximum use of infrastructure cost and thirdly most persons are desirous not for house lots, but for housing units, the demand to build and give them the key, people don’t want the stress of having to build,” the minister said.
The construction will occur simultaneously with the construction of roads, drainage, bridges and the provision of water and electricity. The ministry is also collaborating with financial lending institutions to make the application process for loans easier for successful applicants. A duplex house is a dwelling having apartments with separate entrances for two households. This includes two-storey houses having a complete apartment on each floor and also side-by-side apartments on a single lot that share a common wall.