Ground-breaking for the St. Maarten Housing Development Foundation (SMHDF) Blue Mountain Estates project (see related story) marks a step in the right direction. Although their main task remains social homes, such agencies on the other Dutch Caribbean islands have also ventured into other real estate markets to diversify their portfolios and create more sustainable business models.
In addition to current SMHDF tenants, first-time owners were mentioned, along with an interest-free pre-financing construction concept. That sounds good, but they still won’t exactly be cheap.
After all, the first six standalone three-bedroom villas with an apartment below are said to cost just over 2.4 million Netherlands Antillean guilders. This translates to NAf. 400,000 each in building expenses alone.
Mind you, that’s certainly not a bad price either in St. Maarten for what was called “affordable, high-quality properties” especially with a favourable mortgage arrangement. However, the idea that decent housing can be created at much lower rates under the current circumstances simply isn’t realistic and that’s not likely to get better anytime soon with the war in Europe and related sanctions.
Nevertheless, in addition to fixing its remaining mostly low-income rental units at Belvedere and elsewhere in a state of disrepair due to Hurricane Irma and/or lack of maintenance, there is nothing wrong with SMHDF developing an alternative option to help deal with the acute lack of widely-attainable living accommodations in the country. The contractor also deserves praise for coming up with an innovative financing scheme to make it possible.
Together with similar initiatives like that of General Pension Fund APS at Mary’s Fancy and government’s intended housing project for which means have been reserved from the Dutch-sponsored Trust Fund managed by the World Bank, it could make at least a small positive difference. One needs to start somewhere.
