HDC moving to regularise squatters occupying properties

SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­[email protected]

In a bold move, the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) is look­ing to reg­u­larise squat­ters who have tak­en up res­i­dence in some of its un­oc­cu­pied prop­er­ties.

As it stands, there are about 1,000 prop­er­ties il­le­gal­ly oc­cu­pied right now.

That’s a min­i­mum of $500 mil­lion worth of val­ue, said chair­man Feeroz Khan in an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia last week.

“Our first port of call when we dis­cov­er il­le­gal oc­cu­pa­tion is to try and reg­u­larise per­sons who are in il­le­gal oc­cu­pa­tion, and if they can qual­i­fy for a mort­gage, we put them through that sales process. There are some peo­ple who we are treat­ing with at the mo­ment. But it re­al­ly is a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber,” said Khan.

Guardian Me­dia ques­tioned Khan on whether reg­u­lar­is­ing il­le­gal oc­cu­piers was fair to ap­pli­cants who have been wait­ing years for a pub­lic home, and he re­spond­ed: “I un­der­stand that is … but it al­so means that I have some­body who is in the house, who, if I have to get them out of the house, it’s a lengthy process.”

He said the il­le­gal oc­cu­pants gave a list of rea­sons why they moved in with­out ap­proval.

A few of them, he said, when as­sessed, could pay the rent and mort­gage.

Khan said at some stage, HDC would have to take a hard­er ap­proach.

“There are peo­ple who oc­cu­py units and pre­vent you from sell­ing.”

Last week, Khan said the HDC had to “in­ter­rupt” some­one who had moved in­to an apart­ment in Oa­sis Greens, En­ter­prise.

“If I were to es­ti­mate the val­ue of the units that are il­le­gal­ly oc­cu­pied, it would prob­a­bly be in the mil­lions. That is, rent and mort­gages are be­ing lost, and we have had to pay costs to build those units.”

Some of the HDC set­tle­ments peo­ple have en­tered with­out au­tho­ri­sa­tion are Green­vale Park in La Hor­quet­ta, Oa­sis Greens in En­ter­prise, Orop­une Vil­lage and Cy­press Ridge, San Fer­nan­do.

“It’s all over.”

HDC has 215 hous­ing de­vel­op­ments scat­tered across the coun­try.

Khan said the HDC is seek­ing to ac­quire a $1 bil­lion loan from in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nanciers to set­tle its grow­ing debts.

While HDC is look­ing to bor­row this sig­nif­i­cant sum in the first quar­ter of 2026 to get its house in or­der, iron­i­cal­ly, the cor­po­ra­tion is owed $1 bil­lion by delin­quent home­own­ers.

These out­stand­ing pay­ments have been lin­ger­ing at the cor­po­ra­tion for years.

When the HDC’s new board was in­stalled in Au­gust, Khan said he dis­cov­ered the cor­po­ra­tion had been “haem­or­rhag­ing” and left in deep debt by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment when they left of­fice in April.

“We have been left in a sit­u­a­tion where we have more bills than we can pay. At this point, we have to re­duce our ex­pens­es. We can’t sus­tain that lev­el of mis­man­age­ment and cor­rup­tion. It’s not a pret­ty pic­ture.”

Every year, he said, the HDC spends $175 mil­lion on grass cut­ting, drain main­te­nance and garbage col­lec­tion in some of its hous­ing de­vel­op­ments.

Khan said the cost of these three ser­vices was “gross­ly over­val­ued”.

“Bear in mind, there has nev­er been any com­pet­i­tive ten­der for these ser­vices. Many of those con­tracts were im­prop­er­ly award­ed … and I would even sug­gest may have been il­le­gal­ly award­ed. So if we have to sur­vive, then we have to find ways to re­duce our ex­pens­es.”

He said HDC al­so found that 332 con­tracts that came to an end “were all ex­tend­ed”, de­spite the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Prop­er­ty Act be­ing ful­ly pro­claimed in 2023.

It was al­so dis­cov­ered that sev­er­al con­tracts were award­ed with­out a ten­der­ing process.

Khan said HDC has on its pay­roll 400 dai­ly-paid and 300 month­ly-paid work­ers, which the cor­po­ra­tion in­tends to utilise to cut costs on these con­tract­ed ser­vices.

“And our first charge is to get some of these ser­vices to be pro­vid­ed by our in-house labour. We have been talk­ing with (NUGFW) Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers, with a view to relook­ing at the ser­vices that these work­ers will pro­vide.”

He said these work­ers can cut grass and clean drains to slash costs.

Re­cent­ly, HDC put out ten­ders for 15 garbage col­lec­tion con­tracts to ser­vice 40 HDC hous­ing sites in Jan­u­ary.

This move came af­ter sev­er­al con­trac­tors, hired un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion on one-year con­tracts, aban­doned their jobs, lead­ing to a pile-up of trash in sev­er­al HDC com­mu­ni­ties lead­ing up to Christ­mas.

Khan said HDC hopes to re­duce the cost of the garbage pick-up ser­vice by 25 to 33 per cent when the new con­trac­tors come on board in Jan­u­ary.

As it stands, Khan said HDC owed its sup­pli­ers and con­trac­tors $600 mil­lion.

“We have $100 mil­lion owed to the bank in ex­cess of our au­tho­rised over­draft lim­it.”

In ad­di­tion, the cor­po­ra­tion owed be­tween $300 mil­lion and $400 mil­lion to its pen­sion plan.

“So we have an im­me­di­ate debt oblig­a­tion of about $1.1 bil­lion.”

As a short-term mea­sure, Khan said HDC is propos­ing to raise a $1 bil­lion loan to ad­dress most of these com­mit­ments.

Khan said he has al­ready spo­ken to in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions to raise the mon­ey.

“I’m ne­go­ti­at­ing with peo­ple now to try and have that with­in 60 days or so. It is look­ing promis­ing.”

He ex­plained that HDC cur­rent­ly has 1,200 hous­ing units un­der con­struc­tion, which must be com­plet­ed and con­vert­ed in­to mort­gages that can gen­er­ate $500 mil­lion in rev­enue.

A pool of 3,000 rent-to-own and li­cence-to-oc­cu­py units could rake in an ad­di­tion­al $300 mil­lion.

HDC al­so has an in­ven­to­ry of 500 units, which could earn an ex­tra $200 mil­lion.

“If we get a loan, I can liq­ui­date some of our in­ven­to­ry and pay back the loan.”

Khan said he has to en­sure that its op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es are in line with HDC’s rev­enue.