HUMAN rights crusader Carla Gullotta is prodding the Ministry of Local Government and Community Development to lean towards establishing more transitional facilities for the island’s homeless while insisting that the drop-in centre model, which appears to be favoured, is “not the solution”.

A list of facilities for the homeless recorded on the ministry’s website mention some seven drop-in centres across the island in addition to several night shelters and transitional care facilities.

Speaking with the Jamaica Observer on Monday, Gullotta, who operates the Portland Rehabilitation Management Homeless Shelter in Port Antonio, said allotting funds to the maintenance of drop-in centres has not improved the plight of vagrants.

“The drop-in centres… they are not the solution. There is one even in Portland which doesn’t solve the problem in the town because the town, which should be a resort area, is full of people lying down on the main road, in front of the bank, et cetera. It’s not solving the problem for them because if you take them in at 6:00 pm, give them a shower, give them a meal, send them back to the street at 8:00 am where is the improvement?” Gullotta queried.

“It’s only that they get shelter, but they don’t get professional assistance in order for them to not be sitting there forever,” she theorised.

Instead the rights advocate, who is executive director of Stand Up For Jamaica, said the transitional facility model, which the Portland Rehabilitation Management Homeless Shelter is fashioned off, has seen many becoming stable enough to return to living normal lives.

“Our residents go to school, they have jobs, they do counselling and self-awareness sessions. They do craft and quite an amount of activities. The drop-in centres, I don’t know why they are so popular, and there is a choice to open more than one. It might be critical in terms of [clearing] the street at night but it won’t be a solution in terms of responding to the mental illness problem,” Gullotta argued while opining that “mental illness and homelessness are very much related”.

“The pattern is that something happens to somebody which might be a trauma which is affecting his mental status. He has nowhere to go to get counselling, help or assistance, so little by little he is going down the drain, loses family, loses job, and ends up in the streets. I think this is something we want to address,” she stated.

Gullotta described the data on mental illness in Jamaica as “horrifying” and warned that “trauma, if not taken care of at the first appearance, might be carrying the person to a level of mental challenge which is not curable”.

Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton, speaking at the Jamaica Observer’s Monday Exchange on October 6, 2025, said mental illness is more of an issue in the population than most people are aware. According to Tufton, a local study found that four out of every 10 Jamaicans “at some point in their lives experience a mental health challenge”.

He pointed out that this is broken down into issues such as depression, anxiety disorders, and schizophrenia.

“What it means is that if there are 10 of us in this room, at least four of us would have had some mental health-related issues. And what this does, it raises mental health as perhaps the leading noncommunicable disease profile in our population,” Tufton told Observer editors and reporters then.

Last Friday, Local Government Minister Desmond McKenzie revealed the ministry has embarked on a survey to gather information on the state of homelessness across Jamaica and will be building 14 new shelters islandwide to accommodate people who have been sleeping rough.

“This survey will give us an opportunity, when it is done, to plan adequately to meet the demands of the homeless population here in Jamaica,” McKenzie said, adding that, “the Ministry of Local Government will be working closely with the National Housing Trust; we are going to be erecting 14 major shelters in every parish in Jamaica in the new financial year to deal with the issue of the homeless population”.