Coming to a Low Income Home near You :

The Minister of Housing has ceremoniously announced that Housing will be seeking to recover some $50 million from low income home owners countrywide who got homes in the last decade.

The minister went on to insinuate that most people -90 percent of the home owners- have fallen behind on their payments and that GOB will be seeking to recover these non-performing loans.

The veiled threat of political victimization could not be ignored as he promised to “expose and collect” from some big people who get house even as he promised  to write off the back mortgages of real poor people, a determination He will unilaterally make.

The stage is being set for a massive -if not the ULTIMATE “QUITAR” of Belizean lands and homes.

Considering that most of the houses to undergo this review were constructed by the PUP in accordance with its 1998 Manifesto commitment, the 7000 Belizeans occupying these residences need to get ready to be thrown out of their home at short notice.  In these hard times, where will the disenfranchised former CITCO sanitation workers, unemployed for a year now, find the money to catch up on house payments? Two years ago they had jobs, job security and the dignity of being able to work. Now they have lost all this and they must next be prepared to lose the roof over their heads.

Admittedly, a few people who were close to the administration took advantage of the afforability of these housing loans and they should be asked to bring their mortgages current. But 99.9% of the houses built under the PUP were given to deserving Belizeans who otherwise could not afford/qualify for a home from the mainsbuttream financial institutions.  It was no less than deserved, no less than we had a responsibility to deliver  and no shame and blame campaign will embarrass us into shutting up from calling this what it is; the ULIMATE QUITAR  of the roofs from over the heads of the poor.

We will stay on top of this for and on behalf of the principle that delivered the keys of home ownership into the hands of the single mothers, manual workers and young families. It brought them dignity and sense of belonging, of heritage and having something to pass on to the next generation.

Twelve years ago the PUP vision built houses that are now homes. UDP purports to take it away and maybe replace it with their signature “plywood possibilities “ that they dare hurricanes to come blow away.  We will not let this happen.