St Louis to get new housing estate soon |24 November 2015

onstruction work is about to start on a new housing estate in the district of St Louis, precisely on parcel V11567 at Belonie.  

The project site is referred to as Ex-Oliver after its previous land owner Therese Oliver.  The government purchased the property in 2004. The property covers an area of about 3600sqm.
 
This new housing estate will consist of five blocks of flats (two blocks of 2-bedroom units and three blocks of 3-bedroom units) making a total of 40 units (16 x 2-bedrooms and 24 x 3-bedrooms).
 
Allied Builders have been awarded the contract to build the estate through open tender for Class I contractors. The construction of the estate is expected to be done in one phase only over a period of 18 months. The project is costing approximately R20 million and is being funded entirely through a grant by Qatar Development Fund. This donation from Qatar Development Fund comes only months after Seychelles had received a grant from the government of the United Arab Emirates to finance 106 units out of a total of 180 houses.
 
This new Ex-Oliver housing project is the fifth regional housing project that has started on Mahe this year. The four previous projects are Ex-Dominic Savio (Belonie); Ex-ION (Barbarons); Ex-Desaubin (Takamaka) and Ex-Kashoggy (Beau Vallon).

“Regional housing projects are very beneficial to the communities as they allow for retention of key local populations by minimising emigration which often destabilise district operations in terms of workforce, social cohesion, and useful local knowledge,” says a press release from the Ministry of Land Use and Housing.

“As is generally the case in the urban districts, St Louis, Bel Air, Mont Buxton and English River districts have each a long waiting list of paying applicants for housing, and the project together with the Ex-Dominic Savio project will be of great relief to those beneficiary districts as they will address their housing needs substantially,” adds the press release.  

The increase in the number of 3-bedroom units in both projects will be of immense advantage to the large families, especially the extended ones where the more productive children want to accommodate their aged parents. This will further help in strengthening the social cohesion much talked about at community level.

St Louis currently has a waiting list of 67 applicants who already qualify for housing assistance out of a total of 166 applicants (i.e. applicants who have met the minimum 12 months of consecutive payment under the Home Saving Scheme).  

In total there are 1,434 applicants nationally who qualify for housing assistance out of a total of 3,644.  Over the past five years more than 70 applicants from the district of St Louis have been received a house from the government.