There is a housing crisis in Guyana. This is obvious even from a cursory look around, which would reveal families squatting in one-room shacks on government reserves in areas like Plastic City. It has also been confirmed by a study sponsored by the Inter-American Development Bank, which looked at ‘The State of Housing in Six Caribbean Countries’: The Bahamas, Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago.
In Guyana, the study said, there is a deficit of 20,000 units for low-income families and some 52,000 houses are over 30 years old and require improvement. The report quotes the 2012 Population and Housing Census, which unfortunately, nearly four years later, has still only published a preliminary report. However, according to the report, the census found that the national housing stock, as at September 15, 2012, stood at 219,509 buildings and that this represented an increase of 16.9 per cent, or 31,813 buildings on the 2002 census figure. It also represents an average annual rate of production of 3,181 buildings, the report said. However, the actual need for housing currently stands at 5,200 per annum, hence the deficit.
Part of the problem lies with the fact that citizens who really need homes are being given house lots. This has been going on for years during which the former PPP/C administration constantly prided itself on its ‘housing’ programme, periodically trotting out statistics as regards how many house lots it had awarded in a particular period.
Meanwhile, the new house lot owner, once the euphoria had died down found him/herself in financial difficulties. These include having to pay for the house lot, which often involved a loan; seeking a second loan to start building his/her house; paying a mortgage and rent simultaneously until the house is livable and worst of all having to contend with a lack of or no infrastructure. For many, for years this has been a strain. Further stress is added when the Central Housing and Planning Authority decides to repossess house lots when the owners have not started building, which would translate to a loss of whatever investment they would have made in the land.
This year, the APNU+AFC Coalition government budgeted $4.2 billion for housing. Minister of Finance Winston Jordan, presenting the 2016 Budget in Parliament, stated that from the time it came into power in May 2015 up to December of the same year, his government had expended $1.9 billion on infrastructural improvements in housing schemes, built 74 turn-key homes and distributed over 4,000 land titles.
Further, he said infrastructure works were set to continue in existing housing schemes, including the installation of electricity and provision for potable water. He named Perseverance, Stewartville, Cummings Lodge, Prospect, Williamsburg and Amelia’s Ward as some of the areas slated for new development and said also that there would be green spaces such as parks and recreational facilities. This is as it should be. House lots on untamed land with no roads, lights or running water can in no way constitute a housing programme and in fact should not even be paid for. One would expect too that government and citizens would be vigilant in restricting commercial establishments, particularly those which would threaten the definition of the area as residential.
The powers that be would be well advised to examine the model of Festival City in North Ruimveldt, Georgetown. An ode to self-help, Festival City remains an outstanding best practice as regards what can be achieved when citizens or a community work together towards a single shared goal. There may be other areas that were similarly developed, but Festival City stands out because of why it was built.
According to older residents of the area, they built all of the houses themselves. It was an immense project, which had to be completed in time for the first ever Caribbean Festival of Creative Arts, which was held in Guyana between August 25 and September 15, 1972. More than 1,000 visiting artistes from around the Caribbean and Latin America were expected. There were not enough hotel rooms for all of them. The idea was then explored to build houses where artistes could stay far more cheaply than in hotels. People would build the houses and those who contributed their time and effort would have first preference to the houses to live in after the festival ended. Today, forty-four years later, just a few of the original houses remain. Residents modernised and expanded as their families and needs grew and as they became able to afford more comfortable homes.
This project was not without its difficulties, but it worked; homes were built and infrastructure put down and most of it was done by ordinary people. Questions arise: Why has this model not been replicated many times over throughout Guyana? Has self-help become a bad word? Why has citizens’ dependency on government grown rather than decreased? The answers might explain why this country currently has a housing deficit.
