Railway Lane residents to get new homes by October
RESIDENTS from the depressed inner-city communities of Railway Lane and Barracks Road in Montego Bay, who have been promised new homes under the Government’s shelter programme — Relocation 2000 — should be in their new homes by October.
The National Housing Trust has so far spent $101 million to develop the site on the outskirts of the city, at Providence Heights, but the project is over a year behind schedule.
However, speaking at a media briefing in Runaway Bay last week, National Housing Trust managing director, Earl Samuels, said the houses would be ready between September and October.
He was giving a progress report on Relocation 2000 during the announcement of the programme’s first phased handing over of homes at the Belle Aire site in St Ann.
A site is still to be found for the fourth leg of the programme’s project at Mona Commons, which is expected to consist of 340 houses resting on a five-acre property opposite the University Hospital in St Andrew.
The Relocation 2000 programme, announced by Prime Minister P J Patterson in September 1999 to address the growing problem of squatting in communities islandwide, is geared towards providing starter units to beneficiaries, leaving them with the option to expand over time as it becomes possible. The programme, project officials stress, is highly subsidised to keep the cost of the units low enough for the beneficiaries to purchase.
The two St James communities were to have been the pilot projects, but a raft of problems has pushed the project back. The first site selected, the NHT’s Cornwall Court housing scheme, was later abandoned, as residents rejected to the plan to inject outsiders into their community. They maintained that the move would lead to a drop in their property values.
Then, the government had to engage in a lengthy negotiating process to obtain the Providence Heights lands from Montego Bay land baron Joe Witter. But the project was further delayed because of problems with the rocky terrain.