MONTEGO BAY, St James – There is uncertainty surrounding the future of the Inner City Housing Project aimed at providing inner-city residents with low-income apartment-type housing solutions.

On Wednesday, housing and water minister, Dr Horace Chang, said the government could not afford the $9-billion price tag that it would cost them to complete the planned 5,000 housing solutions and said they were now re-evaluating the National Housing Trust (NHT)-financed project.

If we are to complete the project it will cost $9 billion of Housing Trust (NHT) money, which we can’t afford,” Chang told business people and other interests at a forum organised by the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce, held at the Office of the Prime Minister in Kingston.

He insisted, however, that inner-city renewal remained part of the government’s policy and said they would be pursuing inner-city redevelopment, but would have to look at the current character of the project because of the level of subsidy involved.

“We can’t take $9 billion and plug it into the inner-city development,” Chang told the Observer. “There are a lot of young professionals around who will not be able to get homes if we do this.”

At the same time he insisted that inner-city renewal was something that Prime Minister Bruce Golding had a major interest in and that it would be given priority attention.

Last year, the NHT revised the cost of the project from $6 billion to $9 billion, citing changes in design of the units and extension of the completion date for the large increase.

The project, part of the People’s National Party’s Urban Renewal Programme, was intended to provide 5,000 units in urban communities in Kingston, St Catherine, St Mary and Westmoreland over a four-year period from 2004 to 2008.