Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar came in­to of­fice promis­ing 20,000 homes in two years on the cam­paign trail and as part of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) 2025 man­i­festo.

How is the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) gear­ing up to de­liv­er homes? The Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) stepped in last week to stop the HDC from de­liv­er­ing $3.4 bil­lion worth of con­tracts af­ter for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young called for a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to what he de­scribed as a “car­tel-type” abuse of pub­lic funds. Young al­leged that the state hous­ing au­thor­i­ty used se­lec­tive ten­der­ing to by­pass trans­paren­cy and di­rect con­tracts to a hand­picked group of con­trac­tors.

Al­most a year in­to her tenure, Guardian Me­dia’s In­ves­ti­ga­tion Desk vis­it­ed sev­er­al Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) sites to see how work had been pro­gress­ing for de­liv­ery.

SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

One of the most con­tro­ver­sial HDC sites in re­cent times, Tre­strail Lands, which has been falling in­to ru­ins, is now un­der at­tack from van­dals.

Con­struc­tion work on oth­er hous­ing projects has al­so stopped.

Dur­ing a vis­it to the Tre­strail Lands hous­ing de­vel­op­ment in D’Abadie last Tues­day, sev­er­al units val­ued in the mil­lions of dol­lars that were found to be struc­tural­ly de­fec­tive and had to be de­mol­ished by the HDC were bro­ken in­to by thieves who cart­ed away sinks, taps, win­dows, toi­let bowls, light switch­es, doors, light sock­ets and ceil­ing tiles.

The van­dals al­so stripped the aban­doned town­hous­es of their elec­tri­cal lines for their ex­pen­sive cop­per, leav­ing the in­su­la­tion and ground­ing wire be­hind.

These stolen items were val­ued at thou­sands of dol­lars.

Both the ground and up­stairs floors of the units were lit­tered with rub­bish and cov­ered in dust.

A bag of tools was al­so dis­cov­ered in the porch of a unit, which the thieves may have used to re­move the fix­tures.

Next to the tools were a pair of work gloves, an um­brel­la, shoes, a dig­ging bar and a torch­light.

At the site, chunks of con­crete had bro­ken off on the in­te­ri­or and ex­te­ri­or of the walls due to shod­dy work­man­ship.

In some ar­eas, tall grass was grow­ing around the town­hous­es.

Moss al­so cov­ered the walls of some of the units.

With sev­er­al of the units’ front doors miss­ing and no one liv­ing in the con­demned area, it was easy to gain en­try.

In 2023, Tre­strail Lands stalled af­ter the con­struc­tion firm, Ricky Raghu­nanan Com­pa­ny Ltd, was flagged and di­rect­ed to un­der­take re­me­di­al works for struc­tur­al de­fects.

Two in­de­pen­dent en­gi­neer­ing re­ports found ma­jor is­sues with the con­struc­tion work car­ried out by the con­trac­tor on zones D and E-1 of HDC’s Tre­strail 1R de­vel­op­ment.

The in­de­pen­dent en­gi­neer­ing re­port raised con­cerns about the foun­da­tion be­ing un­able to sup­port the ap­plied loads of the two-storey struc­tures.

Is­sues were al­so raised with in­suf­fi­cient or a lack of re­in­forced beams, among oth­er mat­ters, con­trary to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.

Raghu­nanan had been asked to un­der­take re­me­di­al works on the struc­tural­ly flawed con­struc­tion project, the pro­posed 110-apart­ment Tre­strail de­vel­op­ment 1R Project, es­ti­mat­ed at $100 mil­lion, has been left hang­ing.

A to­tal of 936 town­hous­es and apart­ment units were sup­posed to be con­struct­ed on the site in two phas­es.

In 2018, 82 ap­pli­cants were hand­ed keys, and in 2020, 123 homes were dis­trib­uted.

Each town­house costs $788,202.

By Sep­tem­ber 2024, HDC stat­ed it in­tend­ed to de­mol­ish more than half of the 100 hous­ing units at the trou­bled site due to in­fra­struc­tur­al is­sues.

The res­i­den­tial build­ings were val­ued at mil­lions of dol­lars.

De­spite this, Raghu­nanan was sup­posed to be paid mil­lions for work done on the de­vel­op­ment.

The project, which be­gan at $72 mil­lion VAT ex­clu­sive, was es­ti­mat­ed to be $112 mil­lion.

The con­tract, award­ed to Raghu­nanan on Jan­u­ary 29, 2020, for the con­struc­tion of 103 homes, had one ma­jor anom­aly: Raghu­nanan did not have a track record of con­struct­ing hous­ing de­vel­op­ments.

Tre­strail was his first hous­ing de­vel­op­ment.

The units should have been com­plet­ed with­in 240 days from the date of com­mence­ment, which was No­vem­ber 2020.

In the HDC’s view, 1,151 days had passed since the con­tract was is­sued, and at­tempts to get Raghu­nanan to com­ply with cor­rec­tive ac­tion in the hous­ing units had been fu­tile, adding fur­ther de­lays to the HDC sys­tem.

On March 22, 2024, the HDC wrote to Raghu­nanan in­di­cat­ing its in­ten­tion to ter­mi­nate the con­tract af­ter a 14-day no­tice pe­ri­od.

That pe­ri­od end­ed on April 6, af­ter which Raghu­nanan was ex­pelled from the site.

Then hous­ing min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said the con­trac­tor had to fund all re­me­di­al works.

HDC had in­vit­ed sev­er­al con­trac­tors to tour Tre­strail and sub­mit a quo­ta­tion for the pro­vi­sion of de­mo­li­tion ser­vices for Tre­strail Phase 1 R.

More than a year and a half lat­er, the de­fec­tive homes were nev­er torn down, and van­dals have been hav­ing a field day steal­ing items from the prop­er­ties.

UNC’s takeover of projects

When the UNC was elect­ed in­to of­fice last April, Tre­strail Lands was one of the HDC sites Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee had toured to as­sess the coun­try’s stock of hous­ing units, in­clud­ing those al­ready built but in need of re­me­di­a­tion and those to be con­struct­ed.

Among the sites Lee viewed were Cit­rus Close in Laven­tille, Pineap­ple Set­tle­ment in Mau­si­ca, Cau­ra at El Do­ra­do and Ed­in­burgh Tow­ers in Ch­agua­nas.

Lee said some town­hous­es were al­so be­ing built at Scott and Gor­don Streets, St Au­gus­tine.

He told re­porters there were some is­sues at Tre­strail Lands, which he was work­ing on.

Tre­strail Lands is one of 15 hous­ing projects list­ed on the HDC’s web­site as “de­liv­ered/com­plet­ed,” while ten sites are still “un­der con­struc­tion,” and three are cur­rent­ly “on­go­ing.”

In­fra­struc­tur­al works were car­ried out on 384 units at Tre­strail Lands last year.

In the UNC’s man­i­festo, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the par­ty would launch an am­bi­tious plan to build 20,000 af­ford­able homes in two years through pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships and in­no­v­a­tive build­ing tech­niques to en­sure ef­fi­cient con­struc­tion.

Since as­sum­ing of­fice, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, in de­liv­er­ing the 2026 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion last Oc­to­ber, stat­ed that 208 home im­prove­ment and 82 home con­struc­tion grants to­talling $8.2 mil­lion have been is­sued.

He al­so stat­ed that 1,461 units are un­der con­struc­tion in Ari­ma, D’Abadie and Cou­va, while 35 Hous­ing Vil­lage Im­prove­ment Pro­gramme projects have been com­plet­ed and 44 are un­der­way.

More than 200,000 ap­pli­cants have been wait­ing for hous­ing from the HDC.

In Jan­u­ary, Lee told Guardian Me­dia that sev­er­al hous­ing projects were near com­ple­tion and would be de­liv­ered to new home­own­ers in the first quar­ter of 2026.

“We ex­pect a lot of things to hap­pen in 2026 and 2027,” Lee as­sured.

He al­so promised to ex­pand pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships to de­liv­er af­ford­able homes with­in 12 to 18 months.

This promise was made even though the hous­ing sec­tor had re­ceived a bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion of $662 mil­lion in fis­cal 2026, com­pared to $853 mil­lion in 2025.

HDC has de­liv­ered over 50,000 af­ford­able hous­ing units at 305 lo­ca­tions in north­west, north­east, cen­tral and south Trinidad since its in­cep­tion in 2005.

Da­ta showed that HDC hand­ed out 122 homes to ap­pli­cants be­tween April 28 and No­vem­ber 21, 2025, main­ly from Cy­press Hills in San Fer­nan­do and Oa­sis Greens in Ch­agua­nas, with ad­di­tion­al hous­es giv­en out in Ridgeview Heights, Cashew Gar­dens, Orop­une Gar­dens, Eden Gar­dens, Re­al Spring, Trou Macaque, Gomez Trace, Carlsen Field and Tarou­ba.

Al­though Cit­rus Close was post­ed on HDC’s web­site as “un­der con­struc­tion,” the gate at this hous­ing de­vel­op­ment on the East­ern Main Road in Laven­tille had been closed for weeks, with no con­struc­tion work be­ing un­der­tak­en by con­trac­tor Wood­green Con­struc­tion Ser­vices Ltd.

The sod for this project was turned over by then prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in March 2024.

A $191 mil­lion con­tract was award­ed to Wood­green Con­struc­tion to build 191 rental units, a bas­ket­ball court, a foot­ball field, and a day­care cen­tre.

Wood­green Con­struc­tion was con­tract­ed to con­struct 148 three-bed­room apart­ments and 43 two-bed­room apart­ments in a four-storey build­ing over­look­ing the cap­i­tal city.

The cost to build each unit was put at $890,000.

Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk un­der­stands that work was sus­pend­ed af­ter the con­trac­tor spent $51 mil­lion.

“This de­vel­op­ment, de­spite be­ing built as res­i­dences, may pos­si­bly be used to house of­fices,” a source said.

Work has al­so been stalled at Ridge View Heights in Bon Air North, Arou­ca, which HDC had list­ed as “un­der con­struc­tion” on its web­site.

This hous­ing de­vel­op­ment, com­mis­sioned in 2017, was ex­pect­ed to yield al­most 400 apart­ments and du­plex­es on 25 hectares of land.

HDC had pro­posed to build 92 units dur­ing Phase One by the end of 2017, with com­ple­tion of 304 units in 2019.

How­ev­er, four years af­ter the project was com­mis­sioned, there was land slip­page caused by rup­tured wa­ter lines that drained in­to the slope’s crest for an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od of time.

Fast for­ward to 2026, the project, which had dragged on for years, was like a ghost town dur­ing a vis­it on Tues­day.

There was no con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ty on the site.

A res­i­dent who lives in the first batch of HDC hous­es said he had not seen any­one on the project for a while.

“About six days ago, a few fel­las came and blocked off the en­trance of the site with gal­vanise sheet­ing to pre­vent any­one from en­ter­ing the hous­ing de­vel­op­ment,” said one res­i­dent.

The site has vary­ing stages of hous­ing de­vel­op­ment, but has no roads.

There were lengths of PVC pipelines scat­tered on the land.

Just op­po­site HDC’s Peas Tree De­vel­op­ment at Cau­ra Roy­al Road, El Do­ra­do, a new project called Cau­ra Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment, con­sist­ing of 100 three-bed­room town units, is un­der­way.

The sod for this $117 mil­lion project was turned in March 2024.

By the end of 2025, the town­hous­es were to be built on 4.6 hectares of land over two phas­es, but the project was still un­der con­struc­tion ac­cord­ing to HDC’s web­site.

In the court­yard, a group of men wear­ing hard hats were en­gaged in a con­ver­sa­tion.

Sit­ting in­side the guard booth was a His­pan­ic man who could not speak Eng­lish.

An­oth­er HDC project at the cor­ner of Scott and Gor­don Streets, St Au­gus­tine, is not on the cor­po­ra­tion’s list of projects, but the de­vel­op­ment has been com­plet­ed and is await­ing oc­cu­pa­tion.

Al­though HDC iden­ti­fied Pineap­ple Smith Lands in Mau­si­ca as one of 92 hous­ing set­tle­ments in North­east Trinidad on its web­site, there are no hous­es at this lo­ca­tion.

HDC has un­der­tak­en in­fra­struc­tur­al work for 354 units on this site.

In 2011, the land was em­broiled in con­tro­ver­sy when HDC’s trac­tors and bull­doz­ers flat­tened farm­ers’ crops to make way for a hous­ing site.

Two farm­ers sued the HDC over the lands.

Last year, one of the farm­ers emerged vic­to­ri­ous in the le­gal bat­tle with the HDC and his step­moth­er over a 25-acre par­cel of land in Mau­si­ca.

The law­suit cen­tred around own­er­ship of the land, which is part of a 73-acre es­tate in Pineap­ple Smith.

Last Wednes­day, a list of ques­tions was sent to HDC’s chair­man, Feeroz Khan, but he did not re­spond. On Thurs­day, a fol­low-up mes­sage was for­ward­ed to him, but he did not re­ply.

The Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme 2026 doc­u­ment stat­ed that hous­ing re­mained at the fore in fis­cal year 2025, with an al­lo­ca­tion of $495.5 mil­lion.

Fo­cus was placed on the con­struc­tion of new HDC homes, which ac­count­ed for over 40 per cent of the al­lo­ca­tion.

Starter homes were al­so con­struct­ed through the Hous­ing and Vil­lage Im­prove­ment Pro­gramme.

The doc­u­ment stat­ed that the Min­istry of Hous­ing had al­lo­cat­ed $200 mil­lion for the con­struc­tion of new HDC homes at over 20 sites across Trinidad un­der the Ac­cel­er­at­ed Hous­ing Pro­gramme.

The HDC, the doc­u­ment stat­ed, utilised the full al­lo­ca­tion to com­plete the con­struc­tion of 619 units in fis­cal year 2025 by con­tin­u­ing its three-pronged ex­e­cu­tion mod­el of the Tra­di­tion­al Con­trac­tor Con­struc­tion method, the Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ship (PPP) method and the Small and Medi­um Con­trac­tors Ini­tia­tive Pro­gramme.

In ad­di­tion, the cor­po­ra­tion pro­vid­ed in­fra­struc­ture works at nine de­vel­op­ments com­pris­ing 1,716 hous­ing units.

The de­vel­op­ments were in Ch­agua­nas, Moru­ga, Mal­abar, D’Abadie, Cou­va, San Fer­nan­do and Arou­ca.

Main­te­nance and re­pairs

A 2022 Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tion Com­mit­tee re­port on the man­age­ment and op­er­a­tions of the HDC stat­ed that the cor­po­ra­tion spent $126 mil­lion on rou­tine checks of hous­ing de­vel­op­ments.

The re­port al­so stat­ed that the cost of re­cruit­ing se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers at HDC’s sites un­der con­struc­tion and com­plet­ed de­vel­op­ments was $14.3 in 2021 and $6 mil­lion in 2022.

It al­so stat­ed the ap­prox­i­mate num­ber of homes van­dalised was 99 at an av­er­age cost of $30,000 per unit to re­pair, amount­ing to $2.9 mil­lion.

HDC projects on its web­site

On­go­ing:

Ed­in­burgh South

Mal­abar Site 1

La For­tune/Lake View

Un­der con­struc­tion:

Cit­rus Close

Cau­ra

Buen In­ten­to

Hol­ly Be­taudi­er Mal­abar

Preau Vil­lage Moru­ga

Corinth Site C/River­side South

Eden Gar­den

Cashew Gar­den, Carlsen Field

Ridge View Heights.

De­liv­ered/com­plet­ed:

Tre­strail Lands

Hill­top Vil­las

Vic­to­ria Keyes

Nepuyo Court

Pier View Es­tates

Vieux Fort

Gomez Trace

Ca­ri­na Gar­dens

Re­al Spring

Carl­ton Lane

El­ma Reye

Pi­o­neer Dri­ve

Hexus Vil­las