The government’s proposed social housing programme is being presented as an intervention for some of the most vulnerable people in Guyana. That is a laudable objective. But the more that is revealed about the programme, the more questions arise about whether the government has thought sufficiently about what vulnerability actually means, who are the extremely vulnerable and, most importantly, what kind of housing they need.
When President Irfaan Ali first spoke of the programme in July this year, he mentioned 3,000 – 5,000 single mothers, people with disabilities and the elderly as potential beneficiaries. In August, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo expanded in a video posted on the President’s Facebook page, that these would likely be one-bedroom homes, “for people who are really destitute, … have been abandoned by their families, like elderly people who… can’t afford to build…”
More recently, this month in fact, Minister of Housing Collin Croal was quoted as saying that “extremely vulnerable” people seeking to benefit from this programme would need to have their own land. The minister also indicated that other criteria were still being finalised.
The immediate question is what does the government mean by “extremely vulnerable”?
The term was thrown out by Minister Croal as though its meaning were self-evident. It is not. A person may be vulnerable because of poverty, disability, advanced age, abandonment, inability to work or an inability to care for themselves; or as sometimes happens a combination of these factors. Indeed, these circumstances can overlap and can change over time. The World Health Organization’s broader understanding of vulnerability recognises the role of physical, social, economic and environmental characteristics in determining a person’s susceptibility to harm.
Given that the elderly seem to be a central feature of the government’s broad terminology, another question must be asked: Is a one-bedroom house necessarily the appropriate place for a senior who is described as “extremely vulnerable”?
Of course, many seniors live alone today. They are for the most part still capable of cooking, bathing, cleaning and managing a household. But what happens when that changes? There are some issues that are inevitable down the road like deteriorating mobility and the inability to manage tasks. And what if dementia develops? A home that appears to solve the problem of shelter today could become another problem tomorrow.
Therefore, the government cannot reasonably build a house for an elderly person and consider its responsibility discharged. A housing policy for vulnerable people must take account of the trajectory of vulnerability, not merely the circumstances of the applicant on the day an application is approved.
There is also something troubling about the government’s apparent fixation on the individual lot-and-house model. Guyana has a long history of treating housing primarily as the allocation of a piece of land on which a house is built. That blueprint may work reasonably well for a young family or an individual with the capacity to maintain a property. But it is not necessarily best for everyone, particularly people who are elderly, disabled, isolated or otherwise unable to live entirely independently. Is any consideration being given to alternatives?
Why not construct properly designed flats or condominium-type developments in which vulnerable people could rent or purchase units, with appropriate common spaces and services? Why not develop housing specifically designed for older people, with accessibility features and proximity to healthcare, transportation and other essential services? Why not establish group homes for semi-independent elderly people who need some support but do not require institutional care? There may be circumstances in which a well-designed apartment or group residence provides greater security, dignity and social connection than a small detached house in a conventional housing scheme.
Such approaches would also allow the government to move beyond the notion that every vulnerable person needs a separate plot of land and a separate house.
The land requirement itself also deserves scrutiny. If the programme is genuinely intended for people who are “really destitute”, as Mr Jagdeo described them, how many can reasonably be expected to already own land? The requirement makes sense within the Ministry of Housing’s existing Core Home model, which was designed principally to help low-income families who already have a house lot but cannot afford to construct a home. Under that model, beneficiaries provide proof of ownership or allocation and the government builds on the existing lot.
But a social housing programme for the “most vulnerable” is not the same thing as a project for people who already possess land.
There is a danger here of allowing an administrative convenience to become a definition of need. It is easier to build a standardised house on an existing lot than to devise a comprehensive housing system for people whose circumstances are complicated. But government policy should be driven by the needs of citizens, not simply by what is easiest to administer.
This is particularly important when the scale of the existing housing demand is considered. Tens of thousands of applications remain pending, with Region Four alone accounting for a substantial portion of the backlog. The government’s efforts to develop new lots and reduce the backlog are therefore significant, but they also demonstrate the limitations of a housing policy centred overwhelmingly on land allocation.
Considering this country’s oil wealth and expanding population, there is an urgent need to rethink how public resources are used. An opportunity exists here to develop a more sophisticated housing policy rather than simply reproduce the old model on a larger scale.
The government says its social housing programme is for the most vulnerable. If that is genuinely the objective, then it should tell the country precisely who qualifies as “extremely vulnerable”, how that vulnerability will be assessed, and why a one-bedroom house on an individually owned lot is the appropriate solution. Most importantly, it should resist the temptation to confuse giving someone a house with giving that person a home.
Discussion