Serving the People...

Minister of National Secuirty Brigadier John Sandy in his address today has stated that the Police Service is sixteen hundred and nine men short of its full complement and I was surprised at such an 'absolute' number. Not 'around' sixteen hundred, but sixteen hundred and nine, which made me wonder at the mathematics associated with law and order, crime and punishment and how effective were the equations.

This and every prior Administration's belief that crime is a beast that needs to be beaten into submission and not the complex social problem that it is, one that needs attacking from both sides, is failing to see the forest for the trees; crime, and the drivers that make people choose crime as an alternative in the first place is better aborted in the gestation stage and earlier, rather than at the point where people, frustrated with the hardships of life and making ends meet for themselves and their families, decide to prey on their fellow man for survival.

I would like to suggest to the Honorable Minister that he is swimming against the current, and I daresay that even if we had the proverbial one point three million of us as police officers, we would still have crime and criminals.

Why?

Because there are too many social issues that are being ignored, that if addressed from a truly people centered position would go so far to reducing and alleviating crime that we could survive without the sixteen hundred and nine extra officers.

To my mind the burning issue at the heart of the social breakdown and the fertile ground from which criminal enterprise grows is the legal rape required for home ownership called mortgage financing. Home ownership has been definitively proven worldwide as the counterbalance to the drivers of crime and law breaking, and if anything was to be considered an indication that crime does indeed pay in this country it is this discourtesy and humiliation with which we treat our people.

Like planting oranges and wanting to pick apples, the people are dehumanized, backed into a corner and almost forced into a criminal response to 'our' policies and actions. Look, the legal (allowed by law) terms and conditions of home mortgage arrangements are so onerous and disgusting, the only purpose it serves is to pauperize the middle class and enslave the lower class into a dependency model where Government is both oppressor and savior in one..

How in God's name could these banks be allowed to provide financing to buy a home that requires you to repay the principal plus the full value of the principal as interest, pay the full amount of the interest in the first half of the loan payment structure, and penalize you if you attempt to repay the loan early?

Who did they bribe to make this legal?

The impact of these policies is that it reduces the wage earner's capacity to buy a home (in keeping with his finances) and ties him to an investment with equity depreciating with each passing month based solely on the loan itself. Worse, when the borrower has fully repaid the loan he will be lucky if the passage of time has sufficiently increased the value of his property to come close to matching the percentage of his life spent and counted as loan payments to a heartless financial sector.

What do I suggest?

Prior to the budget I told the Minister of Finance in my contribution 'On The Budget' that home ownership was part of the soultion to most of society's ills.  I said and I quote: "They have pushed the value of first home ownership out of the reach of the middle class through flipping and other profiteering policies, and these have to be discouraged now, so that prices can come back in line with reality, and the middle class, the group of people we all aspire to be counted in, can grow and be equity partners in the country again.

The banks need to be encouraged to provide 'first home mortgages', with a simple interest (say ten per cent of the value) calculated on the amount borrowed and paid off as part of the principal. What currently obtains is so disgusting it should be illegal, and mortgage lending policy in this country is the closest thing we have to organized crime.

The size and vibrancy of your middle class is the greatest indicator of a successful country, and the Government and Mr. Winston Dookeran are in a perfect position to foster its development through sensible and sound fiscal policies".

Why wouldn't this Government, this Majority Government, this Caring Government, this People's Government not want to make life easier for the citizens?

Are they in fact beholding to the 'powers that be' behind those same banks?

My proposal is based on the fact that home ownership ties people to the community and encourages neighborhood involvement in a way renting or Government subsidized housing never could, simply because a person's home, being his castle, engenders a certain amount of pride that wants to translate to his community. In a neighborhood where sixteen out of the twenty homes on a street are owner occupied, there will be community involvement, neighbourhood activities, support for local Government and police, and an active 'unwillingness' to allow 'bad' elements into the community.

Simple math.

The Government, this Government has all the balls in their court. Simple legislation guaranteeing the purchase of a person's first home up to a value of say one point five million dollars with a simple loan structured on a ten per cent interest on the principal, broken up over the life of the loan and repayable over time is all that is required to change things for the better and is as easy as writing into law and providing first home loans through FCB and Unit Trust if the other 'private sector' banks refuse to play along.

As it stands now, a one million dollar home requires a ten per cent deposit and an installment of around eight thousand dollars per month for twenty years. By the time the loan is repaid, the home owner would have paid almost a hundred thousand dollars a year and almost two million dollars for the one million dollar home.

To accomplish this the person would need an income of around eighteen thousand dollars a month, well out of the reach of the people we want owning homes and becoming positive contributors to society in the first place.

On my proposal, the same house would require a monthly installment of four thousand two hundred dollars and would have cost the buyer one point two million at the end of twenty years.

This would also require an income of nine thousand dollars, putting at least sixty percent of the people disqualified for mortgages into their own homes, would drive the real estate market and construction sectors into a mini boom to provide housing, and would bring the power of the people back into the hands of the people, encouraging communal and national involement and a positive mood.

Never underestimate the power of hope and opportunity to make all manner of people good.

A home loan is as safe as it gets, becaue the value is insurable against damage or loss, and no one has been able to remove a home and hide it from the bank, or none that I have heard of anyway.

The Government should then be encouraged to institute a property tax, with zero tax on the primary home and twenty five per cent tax on any second home and a whopping fifty percent tax on a third home.

This will free all the tied up equity now held in property by tycoons and make it possible for all citizens to live the Trinidadian dream.

Land reform measures could and should also be put in place to guarantee proper land use (our island is small, our land is limited) and all lands not in use or being developed after a five year period should attract fines or taxation designed to encourage development or sale.

The millionaires, billionaires and real estate tycoons will not like these proposals, but as their business practices are not serving anyone positively where real estate ownership is concerned, need to be encouraged to move their money out of land profiteering and into other enterprises so as to free up the home ownership market for the people.

I have many other suggestions for tackling the root causes of crime, but as this is one of the biggest ones, I wanted to put it out their for discussion and hopefully involve the Government and or the Opposition into thinking and planning Country First, where the needs and quality of life of all citizens are at the heart of ALL plans and policies, and not in finding new and creative ways to herd the people, beat them into submission and milk them for more.

This is the proverbial bread, and we as a people need to stand up for each other and for the type of nation we want to be.

I propose that maybe it could be a place where every creed and race finds an equal place, with the operative word here being equal.

Something to think about....