Social housing procedure more transparent and fair with new policy |28 June 2019

PS Barbe

With the approval of amendments to the Social Housing Management and Allocation Policy, the procedure for the allocation of social housing is now more transparent and fair with all applicants on equal footing.

Providing details on the amended policy at a cabinet briefing at State House yesterday, the principal secretary for housing Denis Barbe explained that the amended policy incorporates best practices and seeks to address the challenges faced by the Property Management Corporation (PMC) and Housing Finance Company (HFC) in the past.

He noted that the major challenge faced in previous years is that applicants were not categorised based on specific criteria which resulted in the ministry and affiliated organisations not necessarily meeting the needs of such applicants, leading to other difficulties such as inability to keep up with repayments.

“The second challenge was the allocation procedures and how to ensure that all applicants are on equal footing and that the procedure is transparent and fair. The way that we will do this, is by ensuring that it is transparent so that no applicant feels as though they are not being prioritised,” PS Barbe noted.

To ensure that the allocation procedures are equitable, the policy integrates the points system, which was introduced in 2013, and in which applicants are allocated points based on numerous social factors such as the date of application, if repayments have been made in a timely manner, the actual housing condition of the applicant and if they are renting a residential property, the percentage of their income that is dedicated towards rent repayments, among others.

“In the past, when allocating housing, maybe we didn’t go through all the details with a record on file so we decided that this is the basis on which allocations will be made this by ensuring that everything is documented and when we make an allocation, it is based on factual information,” he said.

“It is a range of factors that we at the ministry feel we can measure and we can judge people based on these factors. For other factors we cannot measure, we will work with other stakeholders such as district authorities and other agencies as they also need to have an input especially when it concerns the wellbeing of our families and children,” PS Barbe stated.

The amended policy sets out clearer criteria and guidelines as to who can apply for social housing, allocation procedures, the terms and conditions upon allocation and repayment terms. Furthermore, it will also give PMC more flexibility to take action when applicants are not complying with repayments.

“PMC is taking an active approach to call in all those who are in arrears to establish their repayment terms, taking into consideration that they need to continue with their repayments. Of course we recognise that such applicants might fall into the low income bracket so we need to continuously work with them and this is something that PMC is doing actively. It is important for us to generate revenue so we can rebuild other projects so we will work out repayments based on salaries, expenses and this will determine the payments amount by month and the duration of the payments for social housing,” PS Barbe stated.

Under the amended policy, the ministry has taken into account government subsidies for social housing and taken into account different salary bands to ensure that the repayment models reflects the circumstances of applicants in an effort to ensure that they are able to make their repayments.

As of last year, there were a little above 3500 applicants who were actively paying for social housing.

“As per the policy and the best practices listed, if you are not paying HFC and your contributions, it shows that you are not serious. In the exercise that we did around March, we saw that the figure has increased a bit and with some allocations that we have made recently, we are yet to determine the exact figure,” he highlighted.

PS Barbe remarked that the ministry and affiliated organisations will not make any provisions for applicants who do not regularly make their repayments. For the time being, the ministry is going through all districts to obtain information and update the application files on record.

PS Barbe concluded by stating that the exercise is expected to last until early next year, as it is hoped that 75 percent of all districts in the country will be completed by December this year. Information gathered will be shared with stakeholders for the consideration of the allocation committee.