In a move aimed at tapping into overlooked pockets of urban real estate, the National Housing Trust (NHT) will in July launch the Small Development Partnership Programme, an initiative tailored to help landowners with modest plots partner with the State agency to create new housing solutions in already built-up areas.

The announcement, made during a Jamaica Developers Association (JDA) webinar last Thursday, follows a recent disclosure by Prime Minister Andrew Holness and comes amid a spirited call from industry players for bolder approaches to land acquisition and inner-city transformation, especially as large tracts of land for housing continue to dwindle. They want the NHT to lead the charge.

Brian Saunders, senior general manager of construction and development at the NHT, said the upcoming programme is designed to encourage landowners — particularly in urban areas where road, water, and sewage infrastructure already exist — to offer their land for development. In turn, the NHT will provide all technical, financial, and marketing support to transform the property into housing units, with no construction experience required on the part of the landowner.

“We’ve already seen interest from about six or eight landowners just from a soft announcement made by the prime minister,” Saunders said. “The official roll-out will begin in July and will include a full public campaign outlining how landowners can get involved.”

The initiative adds to the NHT’s growing toolkit of housing interventions, which includes the Development Programme — under which private developers build on NHT-owned land — and the Guaranteed Purchase Programme, in which the trust agrees to buy 80 to 100 per cent of housing solutions built by developers on their own land, significantly reducing the marketing risk.

But while Saunders highlighted the importance of partnerships in delivering more housing, some panellists at the webinar expressed concern that more systemic challenges, chief among them the scarcity of suitably sized urban land parcels, are holding back Jamaica’s housing ambitions.

“I’m encouraged by the NHT’s suite of programmes,” said architect and developer Michael Lake. “But what we’re missing is a coordinated strategy to acquire large plots in depressed communities so we can deliver enough housing at scale to truly transform these areas.”

Lake argued that while government agencies have been increasing density allowances to make housing more viable in urban spaces, the lack of sizeable land tracts within the city limits has frustrated efforts to do meaningful inner-city redevelopment.

“The infrastructure is already there; I don’t have to worry about that. But I can’t find enough plots of land. There are areas within the city where mortgage institutions simply don’t want to lend. So how do I build in those spaces if there’s no financing?” he said.

“What’s really needed is leadership, someone who can assemble enough of these small parcels to make a real difference. Dropping 20 units into an undesirable area won’t change anything. I need 400 units in that space to transform the community,” the developer continued.

To fill the gap in housing demand — estimated at tens of thousands of units annually — developers have traditionally focused on large greenfield projects in suburban areas, where land is more readily available.

These projects, while critical, often come with added complexity and cost, requiring not just homes but commercial centres, schools, and even partnerships to improve transportation links in order to make the communities viable. But as the cost of building out entire suburban areas continues to rise, many developers are now turning their attention back to the urban core, where infrastructure and demand already coexist.

That appetite for building within existing city limits is already beginning to show. In East Kingston, Sherbourne Limited, a company owned by Lake, is near 50 per cent complete on Kingston Two (K2), a $2.1 billion apartment complex set to deliver nearly 120 residential units on a two-acre site along Windward Road. The project is expected to revitalise the waterfront corridor.

“We can’t keep building green sites way out of town and people having to spend hours on the highway to come back into Kingston. We need to get the urban areas redeveloped in a real way without the gentrification. So consideration will have to be given to how you accommodate all strata of society within the large tracts that you put together,” JDA Chairman Dayton Wood pointed out.

The discussion revealed a growing consensus that the time has come for a broader, government-led strategy for urban renewal; one that goes beyond ad hoc community upgrades and instead focuses on master-planned redevelopment, similar in scale to historic projects like the development of Portmore by Matalon Homes or recent efforts at Bernard Lodge in St Catherine.

Attorney-at-law John Leiba, another panellist, said a successful example might be Canary Wharf in the UK, where a public-private master plan led to the complete transformation of a once-derelict area into a thriving commercial and residential hub.

“Without question, we need a master plan approach to redevelopment in Kingston,” Leiba said. “A designated area, fast-tracked land acquisition, and coordinated infrastructure; something to serve as a national example.”

Saunders acknowledged those concerns and noted that in addition to the Small Development Partnership Programme, the NHT continues to work with entities like the Housing Agency of Jamaica (HAJ) and the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation on a range of initiatives to alleviate Jamaica’s housing crisis, as well as technical training partnerships with HEART/NSTA to upskill workers in modern construction technologies.

“It’s multifaceted in terms of the way the NHT partners to resolve or help alleviate the housing situation on the island. Some of the issues that we have are the upskilling of the developers, contractors, being able to use new technologies that exist,” Saunders said.

“We’re not tied to block and steel. We want developers to explore newer systems, but we also recognise that it requires training and upskilling. That’s part of what we’re doing now; supporting HEART in certifying workers and helping contractors shift to more efficient methods,” he continued.

Still, he noted that a deeper conversation must now unfold around how to unlock land in a way that supports bold, inclusive development —without displacing existing residents or creating exclusive enclaves.

“We have seen this need and we’re trying to treat with that opportunity by identifying persons who own these small tracts of land to partner with us. We work with the different agencies of government on the development plans for the parishes so that areas can be identified… but these things would need a broader discussion,” he said.

SAUNDERS….we’ve already seen interest from about six or eight landowners just from a soft announcement made by the prime minister.