(Barbados Nation) Govern-ment is concerned that landlords are kicking Barbadian tenants from rental homes and converting them into rooms.
The switch translates into more money for the landlords as they meet housing demands from regional clients.
Minister of Social Care, Constituency Empowerment and Rural and Urban Development Chris Sinckler described it as a practice in which “some people are seeing an opportunity to make a quick buck, evicting some otherwise good tenants from properties so they can divide the house up into rooms and rent out.”
Sinckler cited the Fontabelle area as an example.
During a press conference at the Urban Development Commission on Friday, Sinckler said Caribbean migration to Barbados had had a “tremendous impact” on housing accommodation for Barbadians.
“It is placing considerable pressure on the social services including housing. We have a housing problem in Barbados,” the minister declared. There is not a living day when I have not had to deal with somebody who has been put out of a house. I am talking about Barbadians,” he added.
“I want people in Barbados to know we have a semi-crisis on our hands where every day somebody tells me that they have been evicted.” Sinckler said he had also observed a situation in which people had been living in sub-standard accommodation. “This is not the Barbados we know or want,” he said. Sinckler said what Barbados was seeing was “not a CSME-type of immigration as prescribed by the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas” but “economic migration.“
He said while the Minister of Housing was trying to accelerate the pace of housing development, “even that has its challenges in terms of our own physical development, our water supply. . . “
Pointing specifically to his area of responsibility, the minister noted: “It is impacting on the Urban Develop-ment Commission because we are getting both nationals and non-nationals. And the most egregious part of what is happening is the children.”
