Govt clarifies Landmark TT housing model amid criticism

Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­[email protected]

Gov­ern­ment has moved to clar­i­fy the role of Land­mark TT Prop­er­ties Ltd fol­low­ing crit­i­cism from for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, who ac­cused the ad­min­is­tra­tion of us­ing the com­pa­ny to al­low as­so­ciates to ac­cess state lands at “pep­per­corn rates.”

Speak­ing at a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) pub­lic meet­ing on Tues­day, Robin­son-Reg­is said: “Now we are hear­ing about a new com­pa­ny called Land­mark TT Prop­er­ties Lim­it­ed—a state land in­vest­ment and de­vel­op­ment pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship. They say this is to bridge the gap be­tween land avail­abil­i­ty and the in­creas­ing de­mand for un­sub­sidised, high-qual­i­ty hous­ing. In oth­er words, an­oth­er scheme where their rich friends and fi­nanciers can get their hands on state land at pep­per­corn rates.”

Re­spond­ing at a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein re­ject­ed the ac­cu­sa­tion, ex­plain­ing that Land­mark TT is a spe­cial-pur­pose com­pa­ny ap­proved by Cab­i­net to dri­ve pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships in hous­ing de­vel­op­ment.

He said pri­vate de­vel­op­ers will fi­nance con­struc­tion on idle state lands, with the State re­ceiv­ing a share of the land val­ue when homes are sold, while de­vel­op­ers re­cov­er their con­struc­tion costs.

He called Land­mark TT the en­gine room of a pri­vate-pub­lic part­ner­ship for the con­struc­tion of homes, but un­like HDC, the homes will be built at an un­sub­sidised rate, where the Gov­ern­ment will be putting out no mon­ey.

“In fact, no land has been giv­en away by Land­mark TT,” he said.

He added that the homes to be con­struct­ed un­der the ini­tia­tive will be sold at un­sub­sidised rates, tar­get­ing mid­dle-in­come earn­ers who may not qual­i­fy for sub­sidised Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion units.

Ho­sein said the arrange­ment is struc­tured as a prof­it-shar­ing mod­el. The State will re­ceive its share of the land val­ue, while de­vel­op­ers re­cov­er con­struc­tion costs and earn from the sale of the units.

He clar­i­fied that de­vel­op­ers do not ob­tain own­er­ship of state land; in­stead, own­er­ship pass­es di­rect­ly to the pur­chas­er.

“So there’s no is­sue of a con­veyance to the de­vel­op­er per se, it’s the con­veyance go­ing to the pur­chas­er,” he said.

The min­is­ter al­so out­lined how de­vel­op­ers will be se­lect­ed, say­ing the process will fol­low es­tab­lished pro­cure­ment rules and guid­ance from the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR).

“The process is al­ways guid­ed by the OPR. We can’t go be­hind the OPR,” he said.

Ho­sein said the ini­tia­tive is al­ready un­der­way. Two ini­tial sites have been iden­ti­fied. One is in Tarou­ba and an­oth­er at In­di­an Trail, with ad­di­tion­al state lands be­ing as­sessed.

He said the Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing con­trac­tors ca­pa­ble of com­plet­ing projects in­de­pen­dent­ly, giv­en that the State will not pro­vide con­struc­tion fund­ing. The aim is to pre­vent par­tial­ly com­plet­ed de­vel­op­ments and en­sure that prospec­tive home­own­ers can ben­e­fit from ful­ly built prop­er­ties.