On 17 June 2026, the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) reportedly issued its formal Notice to halt the intended award of 11 contracts totalling $3.4 Billion to build 3,700 new homes for sale, on public interest grounds.

That announcement has triggered official statements on the HDC’s intention to get the process right and to deliver these badly needed new homes for sale. All sides are going to great lengths to satisfy the Office of Procurement Regulation’s (OPR’s) requirements, so that aspect certainly represents real progress. But those statements can only offer comfort if one ignores the reality of the HDC’s extensive waiting-list, in which over 90% of the applicants can only afford to rent.

Unanswered Questions include –

• PPP model – Consider this statement from HDC Chairman, Feroze Khan, in his 3 January 2026 interview – “…Our future construction is going to be based on contracts issued on a design-build finance basis, where we only pay for units that are delivered to us that are mortgage-ready…” (see HDC chair weighs new approach for 2026 – Trinidad Guardian). Or this 17 April 2026 statement from Minister in the Housing Ministry, Phillip Alexander – “…The State is not putting out one red cent. The $3.4 billion is the value of the contracts but it is the developers and the contractors that are building these contracts, and it is the mortgage finance company and the banks like Republic and Royal that are paying the mortgages for the buyers who buy these houses. It’s not costing the State a dollar…” So, if that is the case, what is the $3.4 Billion specified in those recent HDC Notices? Similarly, Minister Saddam Hosein’s express statement to Parliament on 15 May 2026 that ‘no public funds’ are to be spent on this ‘Allamby’ project is plainly contradicted by the $129.3M specified in the LandMarkTT Properties’ website for that contract. Can any of these public officials explain these apparent discrepancies?
• Needs Assessment – Given that over 90% of the HDC’s applicants need rented homes, because they cannot afford to buy, how can these projects to build new homes for sale address that need? Just how did these HDC projects, which only provide new homes for sale in the $1.0M+ price-range, satisfy the required Needs Assessment?
• Land Value – What is the area and value of the Public Lands being committed to these large-scale projects?

We are witness to a scandalous abandonment of the responsibility to provide affordable, decent and sanitary housing to our neediest citizens. Can anyone remember when last did the HDC announce a new project to build new rented homes? It is staggering that even with Constitutional precepts, existing Public Policy and enforceable Statutes, those rights have been effectively swept away, seemingly into the ‘dustbin of history’. “Poverty is Hell,” as the Mighty Shadow taught us.

One of the underlying issues in this fiasco is the fact that it is common for people with surplus income to own properties which they rent so as to benefit from that investment income. Irregardless of the HDC’s failure/refusal to produce rented homes, people who cannot afford to buy still have to live somewhere, so those private landlords have been providing that housing. If the HDC had been fulfilling its mandate, the interests of private landlords would certainly have been significantly diluted.

Please remember that, apart from the overall supply of rented homes, our country had a system of Rent Assessment Boards in every Municipality, intended to protect the interests of those poorer families who were forced to rent. Those Boards were part of our system to ‘subserve the common good’ but, just like the elements of the policies for new public housing, those were also allowed to wither on the vine. Yet another detrimental sly erasure over the past 30 years or so.

An HDC approach which truly prioritised rented housing would only have produced only modest numbers of homes for sale. The current HDC program generates a serious stream of professional fees, insurance premiums and payments to the banks. Those income streams would simply not exist if those new homes had been built for rent.

Those three aspects – the HDC’s failure/refusal to produce rented homes in the required volume, the sly erasure of our rent control system and the significant stream of private sector benefits arising from the production of new homes for sale – arise from a tacit agreement to diminish the interests of lower-income families. This situation is as plain as it is pitiful, with strident official statements about ‘getting it right’ echoing within the perfect silence on seeking the interests of the neediest applicants for whom this entire apparatus was created.

We need to take careful note that this discord, in which formal Constitutional and Legal rights are effectively violated, is not a limited concern. This is a large-scale threat to good order in our society, given our very limited supplies of land. Moreover, one has to appreciate that eternal vigilance is essential if our Public Interest is to be defended and extended. These concerns go far beyond Public Housing.

For those who doubt the existence of class-based politics or the validity of such analyses, here is your proof, with all kinds of supposedly-opposed elements apparently aligned and agreed to never, ever, discuss rented homes for the most needy. I do not expect to hear any cogent response to these serious issues from the UNC or the PNM, the UWI or the UTT, far less our Trade Unions. Nonetheless, these points are made here so that colleagues in the OPR, HDC and Judiciary can take note and draw meaning.