The fight for affordable housing

THE EDITOR: "Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you." These words from Matthew (7:7) weigh heavy on my heart today not as a promise, but as a painful question: How long must we ask? How hard must we knock before the door to a decent home finally opens?

I write not just for myself, but for every young professional drowning in rent, every couple delaying marriage because they can’t afford a place to live, every parent lying awake wondering if their child will ever own a home.

TT is in a housing crisis: 77 per cent of our workforce earns less than $6,000 a month (CSO, 2018); the salary range for most workers is $3,553.33 to $15,959.51, but even at the highest end you cannot afford a $1.2 million home with interest rates at six-nine per cent.

Subsidised housing exists, but with waiting lists longer than a decade, while private developers build homes the average citizen will never be able to afford. But the real damage is measured in postponed marriages (average age now 32 vs 26 in 1990), declining birth rates as couples wait for stability, and young adults living in multi-generational households not by choice, but necessity.

This isn’t just about numbers, it's about broken promises. Our parents sacrificed for our education, believing it would lead to stability. But what good is a degree if you’re paying 60 per cent of your salary in rent? What good is hard work if homeownership stays a fantasy?

While I applaud the government for its grants, subsidies and land distribution, these are drops in an ocean of need – band-aids, not cures. Meanwhile, rents skyrocket while wages stagnate. Developers chase luxury profits, ignoring working families, and young professionals emigrate not for opportunity, but because they can’t afford to live here.

We cannot rely on goodwill alone. We need structural change and it’s time for policies that match the scale of this crisis. This includes price caps so no family pays half their income just to keep a roof overhead, affordable housing mandates requiring developers to set aside a percentage of units at regulated prices, and establishing a national housing commission, not another slow-moving agency but a watchdog with grit to monitor pricing, punish price-gouging and publish annual affordability reports.

This isn’t about handouts, it's about fairness. Our parents built this country and our graduates fuel its future. The youth deserve a stake in it.

To the leaders listening, I am not asking for charity. I am demanding justice for every young adult, graduate, and hard-working citizen who has played by the rules, only to find the dream of homeownership slipping further away with each passing year.

This is not just about houses, it's about dignity, stability and the future of our nation. The solutions exist. The question isn’t if we can solve this, it's whether we have the courage to try.

So let’s begin.

JOEL M QUAMINA

via e-mail