Affordable housing remains a dream

NEW Housing and Urbanisation Minister John Kaupa has made a good start to “clean up” the National Housing Corporation.
Perhaps he should also go a step further and commit himself to looking at how to make affordable housing a reality.
That is the biggest need felt in all urban centres in the country – decent housing for workers.  Without that the performance of workers will be affected and therefore the economy suffers.
For far too long the state entity entrusted to provide this basic human need has been unable to perform its core function effectively.
Instead of working hard to help Papua New Guineans acquire or build homes, the NHC has been caught up in a long history of chronic mismanagement and financial trouble.
It has attempted many housing schemes which have basically failed and to this day the corporation is still struggling financially.
Families who have been beneficiaries of such schemes or have been long-term tenants have been threatened or forcefully evicted because they have failed to keep their part of the purchase agreement.
This has been an all-too-common story for tenants of NHC properties throughout the country.
Only a few days after the new minister assumed office, a family in the Port Moresby suburb of Gerehu was subjected to the indignity of being forcefully evicted from one such property.
This has happened before and is likely to continue because there have been no transparent and honest transaction records of NHC properties over the years.
In some instances there are more than one copies of titles to properties while in others, records of payments of term tenants, especially long serving public servants, are difficult to trace and authenticate.
This often results in families being victimised by the landlord or people who have supposedly purchased properties and have titles to them.
The eviction of entire families happens to be an act of last resort to reclaim properties from those who have defaulted on rental payments or owe money to the NHC.
While that appears to be the best available option, the NHC really should be a lot more considerate.  What it does borders on degrading human beings.
There are serious reservations over the manner in which the NHC treats Papua New Guineans who have for years lived and
raised families in those homes.
The NHC has also itself to blame for the poor state of its properties instead of finding fault only in its tenants and penalising them.
To drag someone out of the privacy and security of his home
tantamount to violating one’s dignity.
Kaupa’s announcement this week to halt all evictions from NHC properties is a welcome relief to some of those families being threatened with eviction.
Housing is a critical human need in all PNG urban centres and despite the rapidly expanding economy, chances of most urban families acquiring homes of their own remain slim.
The favourable economic conditions are exacerbating the law of supply and demand.  The limited volume of real estate is beyond the reach of most Papua New Guineans.
There is no way someone earning, say K500 a fortnight, can afford rental accommodation besides meeting his other basic needs.
The situation will continue unless the State steps in to put a ceiling over the price of real estate.
The NHC is the one State agency that Papua New Guineans turn to for solutions to the serious shortage of housing and land in urban centres.
When the NHC sells off low-cost properties to well-to-do citizens or non-citizens they in turn develop real estate that would in the end be out of reach of the average wage earner.
It means more and more workers in urban centres would still remain homeless or would be pushed to settlement dwellings while the rich acquire more wealth.
It is going to be a lot of work for the new minister to turn around the NHC into a profitable entity which can respond to the housing needs of Papua New Guineans.