THE announcement by government of its U.S. $27M Adequate Housing and Urban Accessibility Housing Programme has once again highlighted the fact that housing remains a seminal need for large segments of our society; and that it is fully committed and prepared to fulfil its social responsibility of ensuring that this vital need is met.

This particular programme is intended to benefit persons living on or below the poverty line in Regions Three and Four and will be carried out under three phases: Affordable and Sustainable Housing; Consolidation of existing Housing Schemes; and Support and Institutional Strengthening.

Housing remains one of life’s vital needs, if not its primary necessity; for it is about the acquisition of a home for oneself and family and having a shelter over one’s head that can be called home. Being able to acquire one’s home, is undoubtedly for those who have been able to do so a feeling of pride, especially knowing that it offers protection and security from so many of life’s eventualities. As a social achievement, it adds to one’s material and social stock.

Guyana has not been unfamiliar with efforts by the state to assist citizens in their bid for home ownership. The laudatory Feed, House and Clothes the Nation programme of the Burnham administration in the 1970s, gave birth to many of the earlier known housing communities such as South Ruimveldt; North Ruimveldt, also popularly called Festival City, because of its initial use to house the Caribbean contingent at the Region’s first CARIFESTA 72 held in Georgetown; the Roxanne Burnham Gardens; TucVille; the Stevedore Housing Scheme; Meadow Brook Gardens; and the Shirley Field Ridley Housing Scheme, among others. These are all synonymous with a period of Guyana’s socio-political history when cooperative and self- help efforts were emphasised as a means of personal ownership and achievement. Tens of Thousands of Guyanese, particularly of the working-class category, were able to become home-owners.

The period 1992 – 2015 was characterised by the People’s Progressive Party /Civic (PPP/C) government, managing a housing programme that was marked by the distribution of a reported 55,000 house lots at varying prices, depending on where they were located. Housing communities such as Diamond, Herstelling, Perseverance, Parfaite Harmonie and Tuschen are examples during this period. This was a response to the phenomenon of squatting, which commenced in the 1980s with the steady drift of rural folk to the urban centres.

However, if this housing initiative– highly politicised under the auspices of the former PPP/C government– had been intended as a response to was a housing crisis, it failed to satisfy adequately the burgeoning housing needs; this is particularly so for those persons who were unable to secure mortgages because of being unemployed. And if we are to be guided by statistics, there was a 28,000 occupancy, which made for a 50% level of the total house lots distributed during the former government’s tenure. Another revealing feature would be that during the period 2011 – 2015, that evidenced a total of 20000 lots being distributed, only 4000 were translated into actual houses built.

Above all, the PPP/C’s housing strategy failed to address adequately the problem of squatting, which primarily is about the very poor who did not altogether possess the means to have homes of their own; persons who found the cost of house lot purchase very prohibitive, as well as the almost 30000 applicants who had applied for lots for over two decades. This, and other related problems of housing are what was inherited by the President David Granger administration. The latter has responded with initiatives such as the duplex type that has attracted hundreds of buyers ever since.

Therefore, this programme that is financed from an IDB loan that had been originally intended for the Road Network Upgrade Expansion Programme, will primarily facilitate 2,000 persons from low- income households– inclusive of single-parent households– to access as much as $500,000 for rehabilitation of their homes. It can be taken as a continuation of the coalition government’s determination to bring relief to would-be home-owners.

Undoubtedly, the centre piece of this grand project will be the construction of 250 core homes for persons who are already the owners of low-income lots.
As the titles of the components imply, this is a well thought out and visionary plan; it is designed to assist low- income households to access financing, which they might not have been able to otherwise get from financial institutions for works such as extensions and general repairs to their homes. This is about being able to ensure the longevity of their homes, which will be augmented with the traditional maintenance of their immediate environment. The affordable and sustainable Housing component will supply the answer to this challenge.

For the core home beneficiaries, this will be an opportunity for persons to transition from inhospitable dwellings such as shacks, to proper and wholesome living conditions. This will impact positively on the physical and psychological frames of life; this will offer a new lease on individual lives.

Given the fact that there have been too many housing communities that came into existence without the building of any proper system of roads; and also that it has always been this government’s vision that communities must be fully sustainable through adequate infrastructure, it is no surprise that the Support and Institutional Strengthening aspects of the programme cater for the upgrading of roads; construction of concrete drains; street lighting and the construction of eight recreational facilities. This is about adding social stock to communities, thus making them sustainable; improving the lives of citizens, while investing in them an improved quality that will in time redound to their personal well-being.