Covenants not new, says MP

MINISTER OF HOUSING AND LANDS MICHAEL LASHLEY on Wednesday queried why former Prime Minister Owen Arthur was making an issue of a housing covenant as though it was a new concept.Last Sunday at Selah Primary School, St Lucy, Arthur poured scorn on the covenant to which prospective homeowners at Coverley, Christ Church, are being asked to comply. He said it included a ban on the erection of clothes-lines and poles, unless permitted by the National Housing Corporation (NHC), as well as a ban on aerials, satellite dishes, and antennas.Arthur added no air-condition units or irrigation wells could be installed without NHC approval. He also said radios, record players, televisions, “voices and other sounds”, had to be kept to a moderate level from 10 p.m. until one hour before daybreak. But speaking after the ground-breaking ceremony for a housing project at Parish Land, St Philip, Lashley said a covenant was in place at London Bourne Towers, The City.“ . . . Where one cannot sing or use hi-fi sets . . . There is a covenant that you cannot hang out clothes. A covenant is a standard form . . . this is just a red herring,” he said.Responding to Arthur’s charge that the price range of the houses at Coverley, Christ Church, was akin to “financial rape”, Lashley said Arthur should cast his mind back to the Husbands, St James housing project. He said those houses were started by the NHC and were supposed to cost $250 000. He added the houses ended up costing $415 000 in 2004. He noted that the Auditor General had later revealed that those who qualified for the houses were not even on the list at NHC. Lashley stated that in 2010 the NHC was in a joint venture programme and building houses under $400 000, including some with furniture packages.“If the former prime minister wants to talk about financial rape, we must ask ourselves if that [2004] was not financial rape. In that joint venture programme, the NHC made no profit whatsoever. In fact, it resulted in a loss,” Lashley said, adding the joint initiative at Coverley was slated to bring in a $12 million profit. (WG)