The government is targeting up to 30,000 new HDC homes during its term in office.
This is according to Minister in the Ministry of Housing, Phillip Alexander, who also revealed that, for the first time, the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) will be targeting the construction of 20,000 to 30,000 homes during the current government’s term in office.
“Our first target is between 20 and 30,000 houses and that’s about seven times what the last government did. So we’ve been working very hard, getting all of our stuff together, and we plan to hit the ground running.”
Minister Alexander said the HDC will now cater to middle-income and high-income buyers, aiming to become self-sufficient and reduce its dependency on state funding.
“We want to look at perhaps offering more middle-class, high-end houses as well because one of the goals that the Prime Minister set for us, besides getting everybody in a house, is to make the Housing Ministry and the HDC self-sufficient and profitable. And it is our intention to explore other markets to see how we could accomplish that.”
Minister Alexander added that even low-income homes will see a major upgrade in design and finish.
“What we plan to do in this new HDC is to bring more style, better quality finishes, because you’re buying a lower-income house doesn’t mean that we should give you squalor and bad, you know, bad building.”
A new qualification model will guide what types of homes are built.
“We want to bring you into the HDC through the qualification model. We want to know where you play. And that’s going to set the tone. So we’re not setting the tone. If we say that there are a certain percentage of people, when we do the qualification, that are coming in under 10,000 joint income, that are coming in under 20,000 joint income, that are coming in under 30,000, 40,000, 50,000 joint income, we will know what we are building.”
This, he said, would assist the government and the HDC to also allocate its resources to building homes.
“And also the Prime Minister, the government, will determine where the subsidy break is. So right now, persons under the 25,000 joint income benefit from subsidised housing. We’re revisiting everything to get to the point where we could create homes that are long-term investments for everybody.”
The Minister said the goal is to make homeownership a right and remove the politics from it.