BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – DUE to the perceived difficulties some individuals have in constructing houses on land purchased from the government, Prime Minister the Rt. Hon. Dr. Denzil L. Douglas said his government is proposing town-house-style developments as opposed to the distribution of individual plots of land.
PM Douglas made the pronouncement yesterday (Oct. 30) during his radio programme ‘Ask the Prime Minister’.
“I want to say that we are having a rethinking as well as to having individual house lots for people’s residential purposes. We have come to realise that it is now very, very difficult for people to build on their own house lots. We are now looking at vertical delivery of residences to our people so that we are going to get more into the town houses that we have seen in certain areas.
“… we are now going to look at vertical expansion of people’s livelihoods so that they will be able to have apartments rather than each person having his own piece of land on which to build his house, mainly because it has become so very much more expensive for each individual house lot to be developed in the way that we have been doing it in recent times.”
He said the government has taken note that a number of persons were issued land under the Special Land Distribution Initiative – launched in August 2007 - and not only have some of them not been developed, but there was no payment of the deposit.
What is being envisioned – according to PM Douglas – is that three or four apartments would be constructed on one plot of land. And he expressed his view that this method of development would result in the potential homeowner having to spend less for his/her residence.
The Finance Minister said with regard to this – however - a season of discourse would commence shortly.
“And so shortly the appropriate discussions will take place in the country, sharing of the information will come. In fact this is what – part and parcel – of our town hall meetings are all about, telling people how things will be developed in the future rather than having simply each individual with his own 4 000 sq. ft., 5 000 sq. ft. and then it lies idle for several years because he is unable to really build a house.
“We believe, we now know, it is much cheaper. We’ve worked the figures, it is much cheaper for people to have on one spot three, four different apartments so that people would be in a position to own their own homes…”
