The Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA) has raised the minimum age of eligibility for house lot applicants to 21.
The age of eligibility for applicants was lowered to 18 under the former APNU+AFC administration, although allocations were not made until applicants turned 21.
In an interview with the Department of Public Information (DPI), Housing Minister Collin Croal said lowering the age was not practical for those seeking bank loans.
“…There are certain requirements that they seek,” Croal was quoted as saying, while noting that these included an employment history for as long as three years, which many 18-year-old applicants could not produce.
With applicants failing to fulfil this requirement and other necessary prerequisites for assistance from banks and other institutions, he said the CH&PA system was left with void lots.
“We’re trying to reduce that in the system, whereby you see a number of empty lots and what we want is that when you have an allocation, you are eligible for a loan and that you can build immediately,” Croal added.
The CH&PA system has inherited 1,700 applications from persons in the 18 to 21 age bracket. However, from the time of their application to now, several of the applicants have reached the new age margin.
“For many of those that have attained that age of 21, they will not be affected,” the Minister said.
