market rents with a decent place to live at a price they can afford. That's what public housing is all about. Public housing is built with public funds and is not supposed to cost as much to build as private sector housing thus it is not built to the standards of the private sector. Generally, the intent is that public housing should be plain, decent and liveable.

As one tenant of a public housing project told this newspaper this week, "The prefabs were built because people could not afford market rents.'' A tenant said, "Everything was built cheaper than houses in the private sector.'' Yet the Minister of Social Services says the rents are to be raised from annual rentable value to "market level''. These pre-fab houses by their very nature are not market level quality. We doubt that the private sector would even have been allowed to build them in the first place.

It does seem unfair to build inexpensive public housing for people who cannot afford market rents and then decide to charge market rents. It may be that the prefabs are now costing a good deal to maintain but everyone knew when they were built that they were a quick solution to a bad problem but were not structures with a long life.

This also seems to be a strange time to be raising public housing rents. The economy is still unsettled. Tourism is down and not recovering well.

International companies are thinking about leaving. There is a surplus of housing and base housing is coming back to Bermuda. Government seems to have lost sight of the fact that part of its role is to help the people.

The theory of encouraging tenants to buy their housing is correct. Following the lead set by the Tory Government of Margaret Thatcher in Britain, tenants in Bermuda have been encouraged to buy their housing. That, of course, is a very sensible policy because ownership creates pride and if you visit Prospect you will know immediately which houses there have become privately owned.

However it is well to remember that many of the houses probably need repair now and will not be inexpensive to maintain. A tenant has said that constant maintenance required by the houses has scared many people from buying them.

We do not know but the problem may be that some of the tenants who once needed housing below the market rents have prospered and are now able to pay market rents. Their housing may now be required for other people with greater needs.

If that it true, it has not been explained.

We think there is an additional issue here. The Bermuda Housing Corporation did a good job in providing houses and assistance at a time when the need was great. However the need is no longer great and we can see no reason to continue the corporation. It served its purpose and is now only a drain on the public purse. Governments have a habit of never giving up territory and of continuing operations way beyond their usefulness however the Bermuda Housing Corporation's job can well be done on contract by a rental agent or by another area of Government.