Guyana faces a housing crisis and has a housing deficit of 20,000 units for low-income families, according to an Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) sponsored study.
“Despite declines in population due to migration, CH&PA [the Central Housing and Planning Authority], faces the need to meet a housing deficit of 20,000 units for low-income families. An additional 52,000 houses are over 30 years old and require improvement. Construction by owners and nonprofit organizations cannot keep up with the need. Rapid economic growth in the 1990s has helped convert this need into effective demand,” the study, ‘The State of Housing in Six Caribbean Countries,’ said.
The report analysed the implementation of social housing programmes in the Caribbean from 2000 to 2015 and found that currently one million people in the Bahamas, Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago live in substandard housing. Rapid urbanization has created a housing deficit in the Caribbean, prompting a large share of the population to live in informal settlements that are disproportionately affected by