The chattel house of this region is in many respects one of the most visible legacies of the slave period. The landless poor, desperate for shelter often constructed these dwellings on what we in Barbados called “rent land” to which there was minimal attachment, and sometimes no attachment at all, of the house to then land.
These houses were and are sitting ducks for hurricanes and storms consisting in part of very high winds and heavy showers, and this past week Tropical Storm Tomas made it clear to us that we need to do something about the problem of the chattel house.
It is socially unacceptable that we continue to ignore or at any rate not tackle the question of insurance for every chattel house in this island when we are almost certain to experience hurricanes every year, with a high likelihood that one of these weather systems may very well hit the island causing widespread devastation and personal loss and misery in its wake.
Chattel houses are the “roof over the head” of some of the poorest and most vulnerable members of the society, who manage by dint of hard work, tight budgets and “going without” to erect, sometimes, bit by bit, these chattel houses which to them are their homes and castles.
It may seem a small thing to other members of the society but to the owner of the chattel house, it represents his or her stake in Barbados, even when the land is not owned, but is rented.
Generations of our citizens have known what it is to live comfortably in these modest but quite often, well appointed homes. Yet it can be an absolute disaster when a storm strikes.
Fortunately, Prime Minister Freundel Stuart seems to have been considering the matter since last Saturday’s devastation. In the face of preliminary reports reaching him that over
1 000 houses might have been damaged, he declared that Government was “going to have to do something” to assist homeowners.
He also expressed the view that insurance companies ought to be giving greater consideration to people with chattel houses given their vulnerability – and in the light of the cost to government – to assist such homeowners in times of disaster. The Prime Minister’s concerns are well founded, but we venture to say that the problem requires more than the insurance companies assisting the homeowners in times of disaster.
What is required is a serious study of the problem with the carriers of insurance cover on the island. It is injurious to the social fabric of this island when year after year, we have situations where such serious personal loss is caused by hurricanes or for that matter fires, and almost always the property destroyed or damaged is a chattel house.
Successive governments have by legislation, socially re-engineered the landscape for the chattel house owner. Security of tenure for agricultural holdings and the right to purchase tenantry lands are two examples, and the problem of insurance for all chattel houses cannot therefore be an intractable problem.
We have done much to improve the lot of our people in less than two generations since Independence, but we have, as a society, failed to deal with the problem of the uninsured chattel house in our midst, and we behave as though it is not a social problem. It is, and Tomas proves that we should no longer doubt that it is.
