Vincent Carrara is touting his prefabricated construction method as one of the best answers yet to affordable housing in Jamaica. Over the last few years, the country has become one where real estate prices have moved out of the reach of average income earners, but Carrara has come up with a solution that sees him planning to build a gated community in one of Kingston’s poorer neighbourhoods.

The solution being pitched by the 66 year-old managing director of Electroplating Specialist Limited involves the use of panels made of local steel and fabric wire in the erection of three-inch thick structures that are combined into a home. Using what he brands as the Mocara Building System, Carrara said cost savings are realised because he uses self-made panels as opposed to the regular stainless steel rib lath panels, which has to be imported. He uses less concrete because his structures are only three inches thick, compared to the regular six inches and, because everything is factory built, he avoids having to deal with costly pilfering which has become commonplace on construction sites in Jamaica. In fact, Carrara said his company can produce homes with solid concrete structures at a mere $2,600 per square feet and those with drywall lining on the inside and concrete on the outside, which he said is cooler, at just $3,000 per square feet. The normal cost to produce a home in Jamaica is about $6,000 per square feet.

“My idea is to provide housing for the average person to afford,” said Carrara, during an interview with Sunday Finance from his Arnold Road office in Allman Town, Kingston last week.

Carrara led our news team to an acre of land, less than 100 metres from his office, on which he plans to construct a gated community comprising 15 two-bedroom houses priced at $5 million each.

With the National Housing Trust lending up to $3.5 million to individual borrowers and $7 million to co-applicants, Carrara is confident that the project will be a hit on a market in desperate need of affordable housing solution.

“It’s a waste to have an underdeveloped community like this [in Kingston] and people don’t have any homes… Allman Town is in the heart of the city,” argued Carrara, a 40-year construction industry veteran who said he came out of retirement after seeing a need to address the low income housing shortage in Jamaica.

“I’ve been out of the business for 10 years and after seeing the problem with the cost of housing, I decided to come back in it,” he said.

Carrara has always had a passion for low-income housing solutions and is well aware, from personal experience, of the dire consequences which can arise from setting up a construction site in inner-city neighbourhoods. He said he lost hundreds of thousands of dollars on a 51-unit housing project in Spanish Town, which he named Westchester Gardens.

“I suffered in Spanish Town because of stealing. I had to run away, losing alot of money in the process,” he said, emphasising that the prefabrication method he plans on using in Almond Town will address that problem because “There is nothing for anybody to steal on site.”

Indeed, Carrara describes his solution as innovative, inexpensive and, most importantly, safe. The Mocara Buildong System was certified by the now defunct Building Research Institute some 21 years ago to withstand winds of up to 180 miles per hour and, according to Carrara, the design is highly resistant to eartquakes because the panels are prefabricated to ensure that the walls will have minimum damage during major tremors. What’s more is that the development project has been approved by the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation (KSAC).

But, like most Jamaicans in business, he has encountered challenges in securing affordable financing.

“I went to one bank which said it would give me a loan at 19 per cent, so that won’t help me to produce low income housing,” he argued.

However, he said that the NHT is offering him eight per cent financing with the only “drawback” being that they require him to have two university trained engineers working with him on the venture.

“I’m working on that now,” he said, adding that he is willing to do anything it takes to get his project off the ground.

“I want to see what will happen,” he said excitedly. “I want to see the reaction on people’s face.”