22nd August 2025
The Editor,
The State’s provision of affordable housing to low and middle-income applicants has been delivered primarily by the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) and, to a lesser extent, the Land Settlement Agency (LSA).
The current Housing Policy—”Showing Trinidad & Tobago a New Way Home“—was established in 2002 with the ambitious target of producing 100,000 new homes within a decade. Before the HDC was established in 2005, that role was fulfilled by the National Housing Authority (NHA), which was established in 1962. Despite allocations of public money and private sector borrowings exceeding $20 billion since 2002, the NHA/HDC completed less than 25,000 new homes.
Beyond the gross totals and their serious implications lies a more insidious issue: the actual effectiveness of this large-scale public housing program when we consider the human element. The HDC Act stipulates that its purpose as a statutory agency is to facilitate affordable housing for low and middle-income applicants. Yet over 90% of applicants on the HDC waiting list cannot qualify for a mortgage because they are simply too poor, while only 21% of new HDC homes are available for rent. Given the amounts of public money invested in this program and the desperate housing needs of our poorest citizens, this represents a tremendous misallocation of scarce resources.
The HDC’s low output compared to original targets, combined with its failure to serve the majority of applicants for affordable housing, constitutes a serious indictment of its performance.
Since 2003, NHA/HDC has not had audited Financial Statements, so there are substantial financial accountability issues in addition to those noted earlier. HDC stated that the financial statements for 2003 to 2009 were audited, but those financial statements were accompanied by Independent Auditors Reports, issued by KPMG Chartered Accountants, every one of which was subject to a Disclaimer of Opinion. The Disclaimer of Opinion is many times worse than a mere qualified audit since it means that the auditor has so little confidence in the records that it is impossible to form a responsible professional opinion.
During the recently concluded election campaign, I was astonished by Jearlean John’s promise to deliver 500 new homes per week and “…we are looking to build at least 10,000 houses per year…” if the UNC were elected. Ms. John served as HDC’s Managing Director from November 2009 to March 2016 and provided serious assistance to my public housing research during that period. There is no doubt that she is well-informed on these matters.
The Housing Ministry now has a Minister and two Ministers of State—a considerable commitment of political capital to this important public policy area.
We must avoid the errors of the past if we are to do better. If the newly elected UNC Administration wishes to succeed where others have failed, it must act fundamentally differently from the previous PNM government.
Afra Raymond
afraraymond.net
The 
This week I continue my Season of Reflection, turning to T&T’s Housing Policy and Program. The Housing Policy (2002) was implemented via the National Housing Authority (NHA), which was succeeded in 2005 by the Housing Development Corporation – established by the HDC Act. This week’s counterfactual is that our housing policy and the HDC are dedicated to producing affordable housing.
This is a short telephone interview I did with ieTV on Monday, 1 July 2019 on my critique of the Housing Policy & Program. Video courtesy ieTV
The inescapable challenge for our national housing program is to provide sufficient affordable housing options of a decent quality. The HDC’s waiting-list is now in excess of 176,000 individual applicants, which excludes co-applicants or dependents. Over 90% of those applicants cannot afford a mortgage or to ever buy their own homes. They are just too poor to do so.
AfraRaymond.net 