Barbados to Expand Housing Solutions Under HOPE Project; Additional 2,561 Homes Planned in Separate Venture

Target of building 10 000 homes in five years under the Home Ownership Providing Energy (HOPE) project

Additional 2 561 housing solutions to be created in St. Philip and St. Lucy through a National Housing Corporation-private sector joint venture separate from HOPE

Barbadians can expect to see a ramping up of the construction of houses under the Home Ownership Providing Energy (HOPE) housing project in the coming months, Prime Minister Mia Mottley announced Monday in the 2024/2025 Budget.

Admitting that there had been several challenges in meeting the “ambitious objectives” of the housing project to provide 10 000 homes in five years. Mottley said several systems have been implemented to try to address some of the issues hampering the construction process, including the procurement of materials and the bottlenecks in executing mortgage transactions.

“We have had some problems with HOPE, and the structure and the systems were not sufficient, and we are now in the process of completing those systems and the employment of persons necessary so that we can roll out an industrial scale in terms of procurement, in terms of surveying, in terms of construction, in terms of every aspect of getting a house up and running, because this is not as simple as building five or ten houses when you are looking to build the kinds of numbers that we want to build,” she said.

Pointing out that 1 119 houses were built and delivered to homeowners through the HOPE project, the PM stressed “What we did in two years, we must now be doing in one year and therefore it is not beyond our reach, but we need to be able to make it happen”.

Acknowledging that she was not happy with the current situation, she nevertheless expressed her belief that the targets could still be achieved.

She pointed out that the joint venture programme to be embarked on between the Ministry of Housing, the National Housing Corporation and private sector providers would result in another 2 561 housing solutions being created in St Philip and St Lucy, separate from the HOPE project.

Commenting on the government’s decision to engage with a Chinese company to help the island in the rebuilding process after the passage of Hurricane Elsa, she pointed out that while the original intention was for Chinese labour to do the work, this had not worked out as the personnel could not get transit visas to Barbados, leaving the island for use local labour which was more expensive.

She said, however, that an assessment conducted by an independent quantity surveying team, BCQS, demonstrated that while the costs were over the original budget, they were in line with market expectations compared to the resources out of China.

(JB)