PM: Pay your rent or we will put you out

THE Prime Minister, Housing Minister Edmund Dillon and Housing Development Corporation (HDC) managing director Brent Lyons said the HDC will collect $120 million it is owed from delinquent home owners. This is a revolving fund owed over the last decade to the HDC by approximately 3,000 people. Addressing a housing distribution ceremony at Vieux Fort housing development in St James yesterday , Dr Rowley warned HDC home owners, “If you don’t pay your rent, we will put you out. There is no bligh to be had.” Rowley said, “The rent is affordable as long as you make your house a priority.” He observed while some people do their best to pay their rent on time, there is nothing worse than their neighbours “not discharging their responsibility and making your life a living hell.” Rowley said many people applying for HDC homes are humble and well-behaved. But he added the minute some of them get their keys they “turn beast.” He said the HDC should examine its applications list to determine whether it does have 100,000 applicants.

“What I want us to do is to have a proper realistic look at a realistic list and then work a programme knowing what the State can contribute and what we are expecting from the private sector,” he said. Noting many HDC housing developments have elevators and corridors which its occupants share, Rowley said, “In TT, we don’t know how to behave with that.” He added, “But the minute you go to New York, you exactly know how to behave.” He said in HDC developments there is “misbehaving in the corridor, including urinating in the corridor.” Rowley asked, “What manner of human being does that? Even worse, he continued.

“If anybody complains to the police, you want to target them and terrorise them and even hurt them with physical violence.” The PM said the HDC has been authorised to be firm to ensure this is not “the continued culture in TT.” Rowley also said the HDC’s properties withstood the 6.9 magnitude earthquake which happened earlier this year, off Venezuela.

Dillon said the HDC will take “a very aggressive approach come January 1, 2019” regarding the collection of rent. Dillon and Lyons said the HDC will work with people who are challenged in paying their rent. Lyons said the HDC’s approach is to “put people in homes, not put people out of homes.”

He encouraged home owners to “come in and talk with us.” Lyons said evictions happen only when all other efforts have been exhausted. He said any revenue the HDC does not collect, hinders its operations. After the discovery of people illegally occupying HDC homes in Greenvale, Dillon said an audit is being done on all HDC developments. “There are people moving into HDC developments without any permission and we are not going to tolerate it,” he declared.