The MidH is nearing completion of its first prototype of the homes which will be rolled out soon through its Housing component. The new administration committed that Belizeans would have access to affordable, adequate housing and after only 100 days in office, that commitment is close to becoming a reality. Kudos to the Minister and his team at the MidH, and we ask our people for patience as more details will be released very soon. We are serious about serving our people and serious about delivering on planBelize.

Ministry of Infrastructure Development & Housing

Housing, What Next For The Prototype?

Espat's CEO said he would provide us with a full list of the contract at the start of the new fiscal year in April.

In other news from that Ministry, The Housing department is in the process of fulfilling their mandate to build 10,000 houses for first time homeowners. And while Minister Julius Espat said they probably won't meet that quote in five years, they are hoping to get as close as possible. And while they're started on a prototype, Espat explained that that is only the base model. He also explained three different ways they will aim to reach their end goal.

Hon. Julius Espat - Minister of Infrastructure, Housing, and Development

"The initial design was done pre-election, it was a concept, we like to call it the transformer house where it starts from a single model as you're seeing there and it expands as your income increases you can start adding bedrooms to it."

Jules Vasquez

"So that model I'm seeing there?"

Hon. Julius Espat

"That is the base model and that model is just one room with a bathroom and it's large enough that it can be used as bedroom in the meantime. The second phase is that you add on one bedroom, two bedroom, three bedroom, making it a middle class three bedroom house at the end of the day and the concept is that you grow as your income increases. There are three ways of achieving the end goal. One is the low income houses that we consider to be the social program which I think would be a majority grant and a small portion financed by a lending institution at very reasonable rates. The second tier going towards achieving this is a private/public partnership, similar to what we did today with the road work in Hopkins. This private/public partnerships is that we would be looking at developers that have land for example a fifty acres or a 100 acre that wants to do a housing project..."

Jules Vasquez

"We're showing the picture of the PPP today in Hopkins."

Hon. Julius Espat

"And so we would go into a relationship with them where government would assist with giving materials at an affordable price by through duty free for the materials itself we are looking at sitting with the lending institution, national bank, DFC along with the developers to see if we can get a rate that's affordable and we're looking at pre fabrication for these developers so that the cost of the house becomes less because you're building in mass and then the third phase of construction is strictly private sector. What we're not trying to do is to compete with the private sector in the housing market. You have to understand this is low cost housing and so the third stage of housing is the private sector on its own and we would facilitate the approval of plans, we would facilitate maybe sitting down with lending institution to see if they can get better rates, and we would look at other options so that the private sector can thrive in the construction industry."

Channel 7