Proud Housing Record

LAST SUNDAY, Owen Arthur reminded Barbadians that the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) has a rich housing legacy. He was equally emphatic in his claim that what was now happening in the Ministry of Housing was started under the BLP. He is 100 per cent right on both counts.

No political party has done more to empower Barbadians through property ownership than the Barbados Labour Party. Arguably the greatest piece of social legislation brought before our Parliament since the Emancipation Act, the Tenantries Freehold Purchase Act 1980 remains one of Tom Adams’ most visionary social policies.

This was no evolution. It was a revolution in property ownership in Barbados. The free descendants of thousands of enslaved men and women were able to own the land on which their families lived, in some cases since slavery itself.

There was no bloodshed, no social dislocation, only empowerment. It led to an unprecedented wave of home construction and home improvement all across the country. This in turn led a subsequent Owen Arthur administration to provide subsidies for urban tenantries and to provide massive improvements in services and infrastructure surrounding the tenantries.

Together these two events have changed forever both the landscape and the quality of life for thousands of Barbadians.

With the construction of the first multi-storey dwelling at London Bourne Towers in Bridgetown the BLP continued to bring innovation to the solution of housing Barbadians. We brought the private sector on board to provide low-cost housing. We enabled Barbadians living in Government terrace units to own their units by heavily subsidising the sale prices. We identified over 1 000 lots for sale in a joint venture programme with the private sector to build low and middle-income housing.

More importantly, sound economic management, coupled with the introduction of 100 per cent mortgages by the Barbados Mortgage Finance Company and a competitive commercial banking sector, saw the investment in home ownership soar from $591 million in long-term residential mortgages in 1994, to over $2 billion at the end of 2007.

Very little of what the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) promised in its manifesto in relation to housing has been implemented. We are yet to see the removal of VAT from building materials on houses valued below $400 000 – promised in the first 100 days. Where is the $40 million for interest-free loans to first-time homeowners in the public sector? Where are the 2 000 homes promised in the first year of the DLP Government? How many first-time homeowners have been able to buy any of the 500 lots at $5 a square foot promised in the first five months?

When will the Prime Minister increase the tax deduction for mortgages to the promised $20 000 per year?

Were it not for the programmes left in place by the Barbados Labour Party, the Minister of Housing would be an abysmal failure. It is the BLP that acquired the lands at Coverley, Marchfield, Constant and French Village to which the minister flits from one to the other like Superman to the rescue.

It is stranger than fiction that in April of last year, on a tour of Bulkeley Meadows with his colleage Esther Byer-Suckoo, Minister Lashley said how pleased he was with the progress of the project, but by year-end he was advising homeowners to sever all ties with the contractor and seeking to imply some sort of blame on the BLP Government. Surely whatever may have gone wrong between April and December was on the minister’s watch, and he must now step up to the plate in the interest of the homeowners who are experiencing difficulties.