Duplex and condos to replace 1000 homes project

GINA, GUYANA, Wednesday, September 28, 2016

The Government is redeploying land previously identified for the 1000 homes project, to the construction of apartment buildings, duplexes and condominiums.

When questioned about the decision to discontinue the 1000 homes project, Minister within the Ministry of Communities with responsibility for housing, Valerie Adams-Patterson said, a major contributory factor to the decision is the number of applicants and the fact that there are no available house lots.

“We have recognized that one family per house lot with approximately 23,000 applications within the system is not possible for the government, not even in the next five years. … so we have decided that with the land that we have, we can accommodate more families if we provide housing units instead of a house lot, especially given that only about fifty-five percent of lots allocated has been occupied,” Patterson told the Government Information Agency (GINA) in an interview at her office, recently.

“This Government is not going to continue that 1000 home project in its current form. In our refocusing, we are looking at apartment buildings, duplexes, condominiums, three and four levels. From our design, the condo will have eight apartments on each floor, so we do two bedrooms and three bedrooms,” the minister said.

The 1000 homes project, also known as the Turnkey project, was officially launched at Providence in 2014. However, despite being allocated, several of the almost 50 completed houses remain unoccupied because of poor construction and finishing coupled with structural faults.

“The first phase was 200. 141  are currently under construction.  The 59 that are already occupied, they currently have problems with curb wall cracked, windows dislocated and, in some cases you have verandas moving away from the building,” Patterson said.

The housing authority has since hired a new project manager, Kennard Dazzel, who to date has visited the housing development, analysed the situation and made recommendations on the steps necessary to correct the defects.

“On the first of September we hired a project manager specifically for that project. Works have begun on the homes, and six of the houses have already been completed and handed over to the owners. The remaining 141 houses which are currently under construction will be completed by December 15,” Patterson said.

A condominium is one of a group of housing units where each home-owner owns their individual unit space, and all the dwellings share ownership of areas of common use. A duplex house is a dwelling having apartments with separate entrances for two households. This includes two-story houses having a complete apartment on each floor and also side-by-side apartments on a single lot that share a common wall.

 

By Kidackie Amsterdam