Rural Housing Assistance (RHA) Programme

                                     OVERVIEW

The Rural Housing Assistance (RHA) Programme was established to provide affordable housing assistance to support the housing needs of rural and maritime communities. The Programme is aimed at prioritizing assistance to those that are permanently residing in villages and rural settlements, in non-urban and peri-urban areas:

• who do not own a home (first-time owners);
• whose house was damaged from previous natural disasters and needs assistance for new house construction, or repair and retrofitting.
• who own a house that requires addressing safety issues for vulnerable family members such as the elderly, disabled, women, and children, through the extension of their existing houses to include kitchen, toilet, and bathroom facilities.
• who owns a house that requires retrofitting; and
• who needs assistance for procurement and cartage of housing materials given his or her remote location from business centers.

There are 4 housing schemes offered under the RHA Programme.

SCHEME 1

• Open only to those residing in a maritime island OR rural community.
• Require applicants to purchase building materials at a minimum cost of $30,000; and
• The government will facilitate the cartage cost of building materials.

SCHEME 2

• Requires the applicant to pay one-third (1/3) contribution in cash while the Ministry pays two-thirds (2/3) of the total project costs. The scheme is targeted at individual applicants. Assistance is offered with the following options:

• Newly built house construction using the approved 24’ x 16’ house plan.
• Extension of an existing structure which includes the attachment of sanitation and kitchen facilities.
• Retrofitting of an existing structure to withstand Categories 4 & 5 tropical cyclones; and
• Completion of an existing structure.

 SCHEME 3

• Mainly targets timber resource owners with either pine schemes, native tree resource owners, or lease beneficiary holders who can use these resources as their 1/3 contribution. The Ministry will partner with the Ministry of Forestry in terms of tree felling, logging, and training.

• The other partner will be Habitat for Humanity Fiji for rural carpentry training. The community will provide timber for their house structures as their contribution while the Government will provide other hardware materials.
• This scheme is targeting communal applicants namely villages/tokatoka/mataqali, and yavusa.
• The government’s contribution will cover 2/3 of the total cost of the approved house plan.

SCHEME 4

• Assist beneficiaries under the Family Assistance or Social Welfare Housing Schemes who need assistance with the construction of new houses.
• This Scheme will adopt the same Category 4 open-house design and costs with additional disability-friendly facilities like the provision of ramps, extension of toilets and shower facilities, provision of handrails, and expansion of doors to accommodate wheelchairs and necessary devices.
• The government will provide total funding whilst the recipients’ contribution would be in-kind through labor support from the community.
• Targeted at people with disabilities, single mothers, senior citizens, vulnerable groups, and social welfare recipients.