IF the demand for housing in the urban area of this country is to be satisfied, even more high-rise apartments will have to be constructed.
So says Minister of Housing, Lands and Rural Development, Denis Kellman. He made the comments while leading off the debate in the House of Assembly yesterday on a land resolution to vest land at London Bourne Towers in the City, in the National Housing Corporation (NHC), as he said that the idea of high-rise housing solutions is not a concept new to Barbados, but is one that will have to be utilised on a greater level.
“As we deal with the urban areas, we do not have the land spaces where we can afford to get the number of units, or the number of single units that one would expect, so there is an expectation that if you are going to satisfy the demand in the urban area, you would have to go up instead of going across. Instead of having single units, you would have to have multiple units,” he stated.
The Minister said that even as they go the route of high-rise solutions, it cannot be housing alone, but must include provision for commercial activity to help provide employment opportunities for persons.
Kellman’s comments came as he pointed out that since 2008 there has been rapid expansion of the urban area in the country, such that efforts made towards urban development could also include St. Philip or St. Lucy. He explained that the urban area now stretches from Harrison’s Point in the North to Ragged Point in the South East, which he explained is due to the infrastructure put in place by Government and the development in those areas driven by individuals. In fact, the Minister is adamant that overall housing in this country has “taken a leap”, even though the country is experiencing difficulties.
“In Barbados today even in a crisis, we have been able to drive the development of housing to such that we can now easily regard Barbados as a city state, because what you see now in rural Barbados is just as good or better as what you expect to see in urban Barbados,” he said.
His comments came as he also drew reference to the large number of unoccupied houses in the country, which he is adamant persons should not view as a negative. Rather, Minister Kellman suggested that those 15 000 to 17 000 unoccupied homes can be used to help meet the growing demand for housing in this country. The Minister, noting that some of these properties have become dilapidated, said that Government may have to look at the legislation to see how to prevent such from occurring.
“As a small developing country, we cannot afford to have homes and allow them to become dilapidated when we have an opportunity, seeing the person only wants a piece of land, that we can now enter into a relationship where we can easily take that property and point that person in another direction to get a piece of land. I am not one who believes that you should take somebody’s land and just give them money,” he said.
“…I’ve always felt that we needed to identify those properties that could easily be repaired, instead of EPD [Environmental Protection Department] having the right to just mark them and then hire someone to come and bulldoze them and remove them from the property. We are not rich enough to allow that to happen,” he added.
With that in mind, he believes strongly that his ministry and the EPD should have a closer relationship to identify abandoned properties to get them back into the housing pool. (JRT)