Government, through the Ministry of Housing, has put mechanisms in place for the advancement in the housing sector, and to date, the Ministry has distributed over 55,000 house lots across Guyana in both the middle and low-income groups.

Based on estimates in 1992, 28,790 houses or an average of 5,758 new housing units were needed each year for the first five years, and by the end of 1996, some 12,000 house lots were distributed.

The enormity of problems in the housing sector demanded massive divestment of land, which had to be accessed from GUYSUCO and other agencies.

Land had to be accessed from these bodies, which sometimes proved difficult. But once permission was given, plans were set in motion for the development of housing schemes countrywide. Once the land was identified it was cleared and prepared for house lots. But identifying and clearing the land does not mean that all is ready for houses to be built.

Infrastructural works including the construction of streets, digging of drains, building of bridges and culverts and the laying of water mains, were affected. Following these works, lots are marked out and allocated.

The Ministry of Housing and Water has since 1993 established 92 housing schemes across Guyana. While this does not fully satisfy housing needs, it has helped tremendously in minimizing the demand for housing.

Recognizing that most people cannot afford to spend exorbitant sums on housing, the Government, by way of a line of credit from the Venezuelan Investment Fund, was able to acquire hundreds of pre-fabricated houses. The first 100 of these were completed at Section 'C' Enterprise West, East Coast Demerara.

Prefabricated houses were also constructed at Bath Settlement, West Coast Berbice, and have been sold to Guyanese.

Also, with the help of former President Jimmy Carter, Government was able to acquire the services of Habitat for Humanity in providing low-income houses.

This international organization has a self-help tradition and provides interest-free loans, mobilizing groups in several parts of the country.

To further help people build their own houses, the Ministry of Housing and Water moved to hand out land titles as soon as possible. Titles were given to the people in order for them to gain easy access to loans and to conduct other financial transactions.

The titles could also be useful in negotiating other loans or hire purchase.

In an effort to provide additional assistance, the Ministry of Housing and Water has reduced the processing fee for land titles from $12,000 to $8,000. And instead of paying the entire amount at once as was previously required, persons can now pay $4,000 to start processing the title, while they have another three months to pay the remaining $4,000.

Land titles are also very important, especially to low income earners. In this regard, the Government is committed to doing all it can to provide sums of money for mortgage financing for low-income earners. New legislation was also enacted to allow the use of the instrument of charge on titles/transports, or collateral for mortgages and to bring other financial institutions into the housing market.

People are therefore urged to take advantage of the facilities offered in the accessing of loans.

Private developers are also facing the housing challenge and between 1993 and 2000, fifty housing schemes were established by private individuals and companies.

Private sector participation is growing in proportion, and currently private sector developers involvement surrounds the revolving low-income housing fund for the construction of hundreds of housing units through public/private partnership; construction and sale of houses by private developers on lots allocated by the Government in various housing schemes; the granting of blocks of land to private developers for the development of housing estates and for sale of the houses in an open and competitive manner.

Additionally, community participation in the development of the housing needs is an area worth noting. This is another important pillar of the housing drive and is geared to providing the opportunities for allottees to build affordable homes at the lowest initial construction cost through their own labour input, and technical and organizational facilitation by the Ministry of Housing.

Added to this, in order to democratize access to shelter, an incremental approach to infrastructure and housing is encouraged.

In order to further facilitate this, Government, through the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA), in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), has also formulated a squatter settlements and depressed areas upgrading project.

This is meant to strengthen the CH&PA in the area of community development and to ensure that depressed areas are integrated into the overall physical and social fabric.