A $24-billion housing development that will deliver 1,446 new units in Grange Pen, St James, and expand housing opportunities in the busy tourism parish has been welcomed by Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness as a significant step forward following Thursday’s signing of a construction agreement.

Under the deal signed by the Housing Agency of Jamaica (HAJ) and China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC), at least 20 per cent of the units will be reserved for tourism workers as the Government moves to tackle housing shortages in areas experiencing rapid tourism-related growth.

Speaking at the signing ceremony at the HAJ’s St Andrew corporate office, Holness said the development also forms part of a wider push by the Government to keep pace with employment opportunities, particularly along the north coast, where informal settlements tend to develop due to insufficient housing solutions.

“The idea is to ensure that we are positioning the housing stock where people work. That’s very important. A large part of the informal and insecure settlements that we have was that the jobs came first and the housing lagged behind. The jobs came first and there was no proper transportation system for people to leave where they lived to get to work. And so, people had to make do to live where the land was in proximity to where they work,” reasoned the prime minister.

Holness added that the Government has insisted that all new hotels provide housing for their workers, while he has directed the HAJ, and the National Housing Trust (NHT) to dedicate more housing solutions to the tourism sector.

“So, we are trying to get ahead of the curve and I would want to say that in the next 10 years we should not have this problem of informal settlements popping up because people just simply don’t have anywhere to live in proximity to where the jobs are,” added Holness.

He pointed out that the contract between HAJ and CHEC requires at least 60 per cent of the workforce on the housing development to be Jamaicans.

“In every project that we have done, we have put in place this requirement that there is a certain percentage of Jamaicans who must hold the jobs. On the north coast, where we’re doing the Montego Bay Perimeter Road, not only have we put in a quota for Jamaicans, we have put in place a system of training where the Jamaicans who are participating there are also certified at the end of their duty on that project. So we are ensuring that at the end of these large projects the Jamaicans who are trained, their skills are certified,” Holness said.

Thursday’s proceedings also included the signing of an HAJ contract to add 301 units to the existing 1,506 homes under the fifth phase of the Catherine Estate development in St Catherine.

Holness, who described Catherine Estate as one of the agency’s most successful housing developments, welcomed the increase, noting the demand for housing in the area.

“I’m saying it’s the most successful to date because of the size of it, but also because it has managed to maintain a price point. I was told that for the 1,000 units they have more than 20,000 applications,” he noted.

Meanwhile, Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett pointed to earlier investments in the Grange Pen area, where he said more than $1 billion had been spent on the regularisation of existing settlements and the provision of community infrastructure.

According to Bartlett, the initial component of that development is now 90 per cent complete and included work on roads, water, electricity, and sewage systems.

“The prime minister is about ready to hand over 535 titles to 535 families who otherwise would have been called squatters or, to be more pedantic, informal settlers.

“Today, they are homeowners with tenure on a property that belong to them and they can leave [it] to their great, great grandchildren. So the brownfield was done. And we hope that with the development that CHEC is involved with us, we will see the full completion of that,” said Bartlett.

He added that discussions were under way with a mortgage provider to introduce a financing arrangement that would allow tourism workers to repay housing loans over periods of 30 to 40 years.

Bartlett said the proposed arrangement, which he described as a “patient mortgage”, is intended to make homeownership more accessible by reducing the monthly repayment burden on workers.

“This is an innovation that the Government of Jamaica, led by Prime Minister Andrew Holness, has been driving, and it’s our part in making sure that we don’t only have housing solutions, but affordable solutions,” added Bartlett.