Almost three years after her home’s completion, a single mother is unable to move into it because of a mix up with measurement of her land, preventing her from building a fence around her home as she would be doing so on her neighbour’s land. The woman wrote a letter to this newspaper recently and I reached out to her to reprint it here, to once again share her heart-rending experience and continuous struggle to move into the home she toiled to build.
“I’ve been a single mother for 21 years and am a mid-level professional.
“In 2013, I was awarded a house lot by what I often tell people is a miracle, because one day I was lucky enough to squeeze past the crowd at the Ministry of Housing back in 2012 and get a minute with then minister of Housing, His Excellency Irfaan Ali. This was when I woke up at 3 am and lined up by 4 am for a number to see the minister. Anyway, on that day, after over a dozen tries, I managed to get to the front of the line and I got a lot on the West Bank Demerara.
“I scrimped and saved with the help of God, family and a few takeaway barbecues, to first pay for the lot ($500,000) and then finally got the $1.2 million I needed to start the foundation following the approval of my modest $8 million loan from NBS.
“I managed to start building in 2016, always motivated in part by the fact that a decent night’s sleep was not possible in my $20,000 apartment as there was no ceiling in the bottom flat where I lived. My landlady decided that the company car I drove could not park in the yard, so I had to park at church and get up at 4:30 every morning to walk the 45 mins to collect the car before my son woke up. But I was highly optimistic that all that would soon be a distant memory because my own home was going to change my life for the better.
“With due diligence I got a Christian contractor recommended highly by a workmate. He turned out to be a Barabbas who most likely would have robbed even Jesus today, but the foundation was up and I persevered. Next, I turned to a ‘friend’ I had known since I was nine years old, now a big contractor, who, I was later to discover was probably Barabbas’s teacher. But the roof went up and with it about $800,000 of my loan in shoddy work and theft. Of course, I took action to sue. But that’s another tale.
“I then had to scrape every extra cent every month to make up for the losses…. but I persevered.
“Having gotten a bit wiser, I then worked with recommended small contractors for job work to complete the rest of the building. It was no easy feat. Often I would be on the road at 4 am to go and inspect the work every day, check my materials and beat the Harbour Bridge traffic back to Georgetown by 6 am to get to work on time and then my friends, whoever was available, would help me buy and ship the materials across the river for whatever work was going on. One or two would even pop in to check on the work.
“Finally, after all this, the house was 90% complete. I started to move to build the fence with a second mortgage, then I would move in. I was already required to pay a part of the mortgage and also rent. It was tight, very tight but I was near the end.
“Then one day, I got a call from the son of the neighbour on my left who asked me how much I was willing to pay them because I was on their land. I was confused. What did they mean? How? They said I would have to do a survey and I would have to break my house because it was on their land. It was a hard, hard devastating call and I couldn’t get up from where I had sat for some time.
“This same neighbour had started building about two weeks before me, so both our houses went up at almost the same time and at no time were any issues raised until the call. They had even mistakenly built their septic tank on the lot before theirs, I found out later.
“Then I recalled, when I started to build we had a hard time finding the boundary because an excavator had dug the trench aback of the land and the trench to the front and all the palls for most lots had been buried in the mud and slush from the trench both front and back. The contractor had taken the measurement from the end of the street, and the neighbour to the right had shown us his boundary and that confirmed the measurements. I remember I even had to break down a temporary shed I had built to store materials because the neighbour to the right claimed it was on his land.
“I got a Housing [Ministry] official to come and identify the boundary. According to the officer, my house was exactly on the boundary line of the left neighbour. He said I would have to ‘work out something’ with the neighbour to resolve the issue. It was easier in theory.
“The owner is not in the country. She has lived in New York for years but her son is here, who I have a contact for, and I speak through him. I did a formal survey with all parties present and have been waiting now for over two years for an amicable resolution because I would need about three feet to the left to build a fence. Now I pay a rent and a full mortgage. My son is now in tertiary and I am supporting him. Things have now been tight, extremely tight for nine years plus on my way to the dream of living in my own home.
“A few months ago, after following up as often and respectfully as possible over the last two years, the owner’s son called and said to make them an offer. I offered $350,000 (I decided I would take a personal bank loan to pay just so I can move in) but he said that his mother was not satisfied with that because she had plans for that side of her house and needed better compensation, if not move the house. Since then, someone has moved in and put up a zinc fence that stops in front of my house. I can’t even afford the offer I made. I don’t want a conflict or to be presumptuous and I accept full responsibility for the error, and I’m deeply regretful, had I known better I would have done better. I have rebuilt that house thousands of times in my mind.
“My neighbour’s lot dimensions are 53 x 94, mine is 54 x 94.
“Today, I humbly request help from Her Excellency Arya Alli, the Honourable Minister of Housing Susan Rodrigues and the Honourable Minister of Social Protection Dr Vindhya Persaud to kindly intervene to help me to find a solution so that I can finally build a fence and move into my own home.”
Since the letter was published the Ministry of Housing and Water has reached out to this woman and she hopes that the matter will be resolved.
“I just want this matter to finish and I can move into my own home. If I should tell you all that I went through, it is not easy out there building as a woman. And the contractors I think, they take advantage when they see it is a woman,” she told me.
“I am hoping that maybe the ministry could publish something regularly informing persons who have land about the checklist they need to tick off.
“The thing is, I wanted to double check my land before I built, and I called the guy at the Ministry to come but we waited for about three weeks and he never came and that is how we needed [to measure] from the road. I had material and everything there so I had to start working,” she further said.
“I am paying a mortgage and a rent and you know there are things I want to do, other things, and I can’t right now. I don’t want to move in without a fence. I have tried so many things to resolve this matter. I have even taken people to see if maybe the house can break, but they did not want to do that,” she continued.
“I just want all of this to end so I can move into my home,” she pleaded.
