标签： Barbados

Residents of the National Housing Corporation (NHC)-managed Grotto housing complex in Barbados have issued a fresh plea for urgent intervention, saying years of unaddressed maintenance failures have left their state-provided homes unsafe, uninhabitable and riddled with persistent health hazards. Tenants who moved into the Beckles Road high-rise development as early as 2017 told local outlet Barbados TODAY that living conditions have steadily deteriorated to an unbearable level, bringing both serious health risks and unplanned financial strain that has upended their daily lives.

At the core of the crisis are long-standing systemic plumbing failures that repeatedly force raw sewage and contaminated wastewater to back up directly into residents’ living spaces. One second-floor tenant detailed how any water use by upper-floor neighbors – from bathing and flushing toilets to running laundry or washing dishes – results in dirty, hazardous water pooling in her home. She explained that multiple severe flooding events have occurred over the past 12 months alone, leaving her to clean up human waste from her floors on multiple occasions. Just one day before her interview, she woke to find her entire bathroom flooded with murky brown sewage water, with feces and urine spread across the floor.

The frequent overflows have forced the tenant to miss scheduled work shifts repeatedly to handle emergency cleanups, and even required her to take extreme measures to stop continuous water intrusion. She explained that even turning off her own unit’s water supply does not stop wastewater from backing up, forcing her son to go downstairs and shut off water service for the entire building to halt the flow. “I keep hearing this bubbling in the pipe. When I opened the toilet bowl, the toilet bowl was bubbling and coming over, everything rushing in at me,” she described.

These upper-floor plumbing failures create cascading hazards for lower-level residents, with leaking water damaging structural elements, triggering electrical fire risks, and destroying personal belongings. A ground-floor tenant has lived with unresolved ceiling damage from chronic leaks since 2019, and said water intrusion from above has destroyed household items and created pervasive mold growth that has harmed her respiratory health. Her ceiling was partially removed for repairs in 2019, but no permanent work was completed until 2024 – and even then, the structure was left improperly sealed and unfinished.

“The ceiling was damaged, it was partially taken down from 2019 to 2024 or 2025 before anybody did any work or came and checked on it. Then the ceiling was put back up, but it wasn’t sealed or plastered. My TV has been damaged, my blinds, my towels, everything used to soak up the water. You’ve been sick all the time with headaches and sinuses,” she said. Pointing to visible water damage and sewage residue on interior walls, she warned that the saturated structural materials pose a serious fire risk, adding: “This is sewage water on the walls. You can’t live in these conditions.”

The ongoing crisis comes despite a high-profile promise of urgent action from government officials earlier this year. In April, Minister of Housing, Lands and Maintenance Chris Gibbs announced that the NHC had secured full funding to address all structural failures at the Grotto complex, including leaking roofs and security gaps, and that repair work would begin “almost immediately” after the announcement. Gibbs added that specialized materials had already been ordered for the project.

But six months on, residents say none of the promised reforms have translated to tangible improvements on the ground. While maintenance technicians occasionally respond to individual emergency calls, tenants say large-scale systemic issues – including the need to upgrade undersized 4-inch drainage pipes to larger 6-inch lines to prevent blockages and overflows – remain completely unaddressed.

Compounding residents’ frustration is the fact that housing authorities continue to send formal notices for unpaid rent and threaten eviction proceedings, even as tenants are forced to live in squalid, unsafe conditions that violate basic housing standards. “How can you pay when nothing is being done?” the ground-floor tenant asked. “When you were paying, you had issues. If I was renting from a private landlord and you got an issue, they’ll fix it because people want their money. But you can’t live in these conditions.”

The second-floor tenant echoed this frustration, emphasizing that tenants are not refusing to pay rent out of disregard for their obligations, but simply expect safe, well-maintained housing in exchange for regular payments. “The first thing people are gonna say is about paying. It’s not about paying, it’s about being comfortable. You’re not gonna pay for something that has you uncomfortable. We should not have to be paying rent and still maintaining a home. That’s what rent is for,” she said.

Residents have exhausted multiple channels to seek redress, including reaching out directly to NHC management, submitting formal written requests for compensation for damaged personal property, and contacting local Member of Parliament Kirk Humphrey. Despite these efforts, no systemic solutions have been implemented to resolve the chronic plumbing and structural issues.

As leaks, pipe blockages and dangerous structural decay continue to disrupt residents’ lives, Grotto tenants are renewing their call for Minister Gibbs, the NHC and other government officials to keep their April promises, conduct full, independent assessments of the complex, and complete lasting, comprehensive repairs that will restore safe living conditions. Barbados TODAY attempted to contact Minister Gibbs for comment on the ongoing situation multiple times, but received no response ahead of publication.

As a prominent disability rights advocate and sitting senator in Barbados, Janeil Odle, who is also an experienced attorney-at-law, is pushing for urgent, tangible action to guarantee that disabled people’s accessibility rights are fully protected across the country. Her call to action comes amid growing outcry from the disability and limited mobility communities, who have repeatedly documented significant barriers to entering key public facilities — including several of the island nation’s highest-traffic magistrates’ courts and traffic courts.

For decades, Odle emphasized in an exclusive interview with Barbados TODAY, disability advocates have pressed authorities to enforce existing accessibility requirements embedded in the country’s national building codes. These rules mandate that any new construction or renovation of public infrastructure must include accommodations for people with varying disabilities. What makes the ongoing inaccessibility crisis particularly frustrating, she argues, is that the regulatory framework to fix the problem already exists — it has simply never been properly put into practice.

“The crazy part is that we in Barbados have the building codes. We had it for a while now, but it’s not enforced,” Odle said.

The island’s recently passed Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act offers a critical new opening to address this long-standing gap, Odle noted. The law requires all public buildings to meet full accessibility standards within a three-year timeline, a mandate that creates clear accountability for government agencies and building owners. While Odle acknowledged that accessibility is a “progressive right” and that large-scale infrastructure changes cannot be completed in a single step, she stressed that delaying action indefinitely is not an option. “We can’t just decide not to do anything at all,” she said.

Priority for accessibility upgrades, Odle argued, should go to the core public facilities that disabled people rely on for essential services, starting with healthcare centers and the country’s court system. She voiced cautious optimism that meaningful progress is on the horizon, saying, “I am very hopeful that sometime soon, we can see these rights being realized, especially in buildings that we have to depend on every day, like health-care buildings, the courts, and different places that we have to rely on. I want to see these spaces done first actually as it relates to making buildings accessible.”

Odle also praised the ongoing accessibility audit launched by the Ministry of People Empowerment, which is conducting a comprehensive assessment of all public buildings to identify required upgrades. She described the audit as “a good step in the right direction”, but added that physical infrastructure changes are only one piece of the puzzle. True inclusion, she explained, requires addressing accessibility across all areas of public life, including transportation systems and access to communication and information.

“So even if we get it right tomorrow and have accessible roads and have accessible buildings, if we don’t have accessible transportation and accessible communication and information, we are still excluded,” Odle said.

Many proven solutions to common accessibility barriers already exist, Odle pointed out. Examples include assistive screen reading technology that allows visually impaired people to access official documents, and digital applications that convert spoken audio into real-time sign language for deaf community members. The biggest barrier to widespread adoption of these tools, she explained, is their prohibitive cost for most disabled people and underfunded public agencies. “The sad reality is that there are solutions to a lot of accessibility issues, but it’s extremely costly to have accessible devices and assisted devices,” she said.

In addition to systemic infrastructure changes and funding for assistive technology, Odle called for broader public and institutional education around simple, low-cost adjustments that can make public spaces and information far more inclusive. For visually impaired people, for example, providing official information in a digital format that is compatible with common voiceover and text-to-speech tools is a simple change that requires little additional work but makes a massive difference in access.

“It’s not that difficult to include people; it’s just more education is needed and awareness is needed so persons can understand what is needed to be done to include the community,” Odle said.

To avoid unnecessary delays, Odle stressed that officials do not need to wait to implement permanent, long-term fixes before taking action. Even temporary accommodations, such as removable ramps for public building entrances, can immediately improve access while plans for permanent upgrades are developed. “Whether it is a temporary ramp today, and tomorrow we’ll work more on it, and a few weeks down the line have an engineer or somebody else in place to make the permanent ramp, we need to take steps to ensure that the right of accessibility is respected,” she said.

As large-scale infrastructure and development projects continue to reshape the Barbadian capital of Bridgetown, a leading homelessness advocacy organization is sounding the alarm that current revitalization efforts are at serious risk of sidelining unhoused residents – particularly those living with untreated mental health conditions.

Kemar Saffrey, chief executive of the Barbados Alliance to End Homelessness (BAEH), raised the urgent call to action Thursday during a national homelessness consultation the group organized at Bridgetown’s Radisson Aquatica Resort. The forum was convened in direct response to a growing tide of public complaints about unhoused people sleeping in high-traffic public spaces across the capital, including Independence Square, Heroes Square, Jubilee Gardens, and Golden Square.

Saffrey emphasized that as Bridgetown undergoes its ongoing transformation, addressing homelessness cannot fall solely to BAEH. A coordinated, cross-stakeholder response is required to prevent the crisis from escalating amid major new development. He told attendees that the organization brought all key local stakeholders to the table specifically because every sector has a shared responsibility to tackle the issue, not just the nonprofit advocacy group.

The urgency of the conversation is amplified by the wave of major upcoming developments set to change the face of the capital, including the construction of the new regional headquarters for the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), along with multiple large projects along Wharf Road and surrounding areas. Saffrey warned that without immediate intervention, the growing visibility and unaddressed needs of unhoused residents will impact both local residents and the critical tourism sector, which forms the backbone of Barbados’ economy. Rather than waiting for a public incident to force reactive changes, he argued, policymakers must take proactive steps now.

One of the most pressing unaddressed issues Saffrey highlighted is the lack of consistent mental health care for unhoused residents. Many people living on Bridgetown’s streets have not accessed psychiatric treatment or medication for years, he said, and their unmanaged conditions can lead to behavior that alarms the public and erodes perceptions of the capital as a safe, welcoming space. Saffrey referenced multiple on-the-ground cases he has responded to where unmedicated unhoused people experienced public crises that could have been prevented with consistent care.

Saffrey also acknowledged limitations within BAEH’s own 140-bed shelter facility. The organization is required to enforce rules prohibiting residents from staying under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and requires people with mental health diagnoses to maintain their prescribed medication regimens to protect the safety and well-being of all people staying at the shelter. These rules mean that some of the highest-need unhoused people cannot be accommodated at the shelter, leaving them on the streets.

To close these gaps, Saffrey is calling for far more robust, coordinated partnerships between BAEH and local government agencies, particularly increasing access to trained health and social service professionals to support unhoused residents with complex needs. He also noted that homelessness is no longer confined to central Bridgetown, with rising complaints of unhoused people in suburban and regional hubs including Dover, Oistins, and Speightstown.

Saffrey stressed that meaningful solutions will not be flashy or politically popular, but they are necessary to protect both unhoused residents and the broader community. He warned that waiting for a violent or high-profile incident to force action is irresponsible, and that the country cannot allow unhoused people with untreated mental health conditions to remain without support on public streets. The country needs a proactive national approach to homelessness, he said, and it needs it immediately.