By Clint Chan Tack

GOVERNMENT yesterday raised the income ceiling for persons to qualify for its housing grant and subsidy programmes to allow more low-income earners to own their own homes and upgrade them.

Addressing yesterday’s post-Cabinet news conference at Whitehall, Planning, Housing and Environment Minister Dr Emily Gaynor Dick-Forde explained the home improvement grants and subsidies target income groups at the lowest end of the national housing distribution.

Dick-Forde said income ceilings were used as the main qualifying criteria for the grants and subsidies.  She said because citizens’ income levels had increased because of measures contained in the 2007/2008 Budget, “it is therefore necessary to increase the income ceiling for the grant and the subsidy so that target groups can continue to access the programme.”

The minister said this was why Government has increased the income ceiling for the grant from $36,000 to $60,000, annually.

Dick-Forde said the income ceiling for the subsidy had also been increased from $64,000 to $84,000 annually.  She explained the public housing lottery systems will be implemented when the next allocation of Government houses is done.

Dick-Forde said this system is being implemented because there has been “a cloud over the process” of housing allocation in the past.  She expressed confidence that the public lottery system will ensure houses are allocated “quickly and transparently.”

The minister said a database will be established for the estimated 26,000 houses in various stages of construction and the thousands more still to come.

She added that persons making a no property declaration to access government housing are thoroughly checked out to ensure their declarations are not false.