EC$9 million Pine Gardens Horizons to house 62 families

Basseterre, St. Kitts (CUOPM) – Some 62 families will find permanent shelter at a new housing development in Central Basseterre.

Ground was broken Tuesday for the new EC$9 million Pine Gardens Horizons, which will see the construction of several multiplex buildings – comprising eight two-story buildings containing five or six unit bungalows (Town Houses) and two and three-bedroom duplexes and tri-plexes.

Speaking at the ceremony Prime Minister the Right Hon. Dr. Denzil L. Douglas said he was honoured to lead a government which has a mission to transform lives all across the nation – for the better.

“And what more fitting way can there be for a Government to transform lives than to deliver to Nationals who have never owned land, and who have never owned their own homes, home-ownership? For them, for their children, and for generations yet unborn!,” said Dr. Douglas, who noted that once a home is paid for, “it belongs to the purchaser forever.”

“And it can be passed on to the purchaser’s children and grand-children forever and ever. When a house has been paid for, the person who has paid for that house, and all who will, in the future, live in that house, will be forever free of any obligation to pay either rent or any type of mortgage payment. And this freedom, of course, would then permit whatever funds are available to the family to be used instead for savings, for investments, for other priorities. And so I urge all who will own a home here at Pine Garden Horizon, and indeed all who are currently paying for any home, anywhere in the Federation, to see mortgage payments as an important, long-term commitment that will produce generous and multifaceted benefits, multi-generationally.”

In addition to the act of creating home-owners, Prime Minister Douglas noted that the lands which for centuries had been worked by enslaved Africans have been turned into healthy neighborhoods and open communities for the descendants of those same Africans?

“Once an area thick with the razor sharp sugar-cane blades, and back-breaking work that was never compensated, this area from which Pine Garden Horizons will emerge, will now become yet another example of a people’s – our people’s – indisputable march forward, our people’s sharp break from a distant past, of our people now being in a position to be in control of real, valuable, and constantly appreciating assets, for generations to come,” Dr. Douglas said.

The St. Kitts and Nevis leader pointed out that urban congestion had long been a problem in East Basseterre and Central Basseterre.

“We have been building homes outside of those constituencies in order to create more pleasant living spaces for all involved – and, indeed, for the country at large. Pine Garden Horizons, then, will represent a new and special step forward in this positive national movement, creating wide, free spaces in which the families who come here will live,” said Prime Minister Douglas to the audience which included Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Housing, the Hon. Dr. Earl Asim Martin; Parliamentary Representative and Minister of Health, Social and Community Development, the Hon. Marcella Liburd and National Housing Corporation (NHC), Chief Executive Officer, Miss Judith Rawlins.

Habitat 30 is the St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party Government’s housing programme established in commemoration of the peace, stability, and hope that characterized the Nation at the time of the 30th Anniversary of Independence.

Groundbreaking ceremonies for homes have been held in Stone Fort in Constituency #4 and High Point in Fig Tree, Sandy Point, and Constituency #5.