Gov­ern­ment has in­creased the amount of mon­ey paid to con­trac­tors for the con­struc­tion of starter homes.

This was re­vealed by Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Adri­an Leonce yes­ter­day dur­ing a key dis­tri­b­u­tion cer­e­mo­ny for 50 starter homes at the Bon Air Gar­dens Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, in Arou­ca.

Leonce, who is al­so the out­go­ing Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Laven­tille East/Mor­vant, al­so thanked Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who will re­sign on March 16, for plac­ing him as a Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing. Leonce said he felt proud to be a part of pro­grammes that al­ter peo­ple’s lives for the bet­ter.

Leonce was sworn in the min­istry af­ter his con­stituents re-elect­ed him as their rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Au­gust 2020. Back in De­cem­ber Leonce did not show up for screen­ing, he stat­ed that he had per­son­al is­sues to ad­dress and was out of elec­toral pol­i­tics. The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment se­lect­ed Chris­t­ian Birch­wood as their 2025 Laven­tille East/Mor­vant can­di­date.

Yes­ter­day, the Min­is­ter said the 50 starter homes dis­trib­uted un­der the Hous­ing and Vil­lage Im­prove­ment Pro­gramme (HVIP) cost the Gov­ern­ment ap­prox­i­mate­ly $8.2 mil­lion and were lo­cat­ed in com­mu­ni­ties such as Ari­ma, Diego Mar­tin, Waller­field, Ca­roni, and San­gre Grande.

“To­day’s dis­tri­b­u­tion marks the sixth such event in this fis­cal,” he stat­ed.

Leonce said an ad­di­tion­al 500 starter homes will be con­struct­ed us­ing a $150 mil­lion gov­ern­ment-guar­an­teed loan.

“This means 500 more fam­i­lies will be able to re­alise im­proved liv­ing stan­dards...I am pleased to an­nounce that we are on track for com­ple­tion of an­oth­er 126 starter homes in the next two months” he said.

In 2022, he said the min­istry recog­nised the ge­o­graph­i­cal chal­lenges faced by home­own­ers and de­vel­oped a tier sub­sidy sys­tem to al­low fam­i­lies to re­ceive fund­ing based on the topog­ra­phy of their lands.

He said $165,000 for con­struc­tion on flat topog­ra­phy, $170,000 for un­du­lat­ing topog­ra­phy the $175,000 for hilly topog­ra­phy. How­ev­er, due to the glob­al in­crease in con­struc­tion costs, the gov­ern­ment in­creased the amount paid to con­trac­tors on flat land from $165,000 to $200,000.

“There­fore there will be fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion for hous­es on hilly lands and un­du­lat­ing lands,” he said.

Leonce said an av­er­age of 30 medi­um and small con­trac­tors were in­volved in the con­struc­tion of the 900 starter homes which pro­vid­ed nu­mer­ous jobs un­der the pro­gramme.

An ad­di­tion­al $40 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed by the gov­ern­ment for the Min­istry and the Land and Set­tle­ment Agency's (LSA) key in­fra­struc­tur­al works. This in­cludes the con­struc­tion of roads, wa­ter sup­ply and sup­port of elec­tric­i­ty.

He said an­oth­er $10 mil­lion has been made avail­able to sup­port com­mu­ni­ties through mul­ti­ple de­vel­op­ment projects to im­prove so­cial, cul­tur­al and eco­nom­ic con­di­tions of cit­i­zens.

“This will cov­er projects such as shade hous­es to boost res­i­dents' food se­cu­ri­ty, grants to help mi­cro-en­ter­pris­es and home­work cen­tres to pro­vide chil­dren with safe and con­ducive spaces to study and ex­cel aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly,” he said.