NSHP Handover Ceremony; Whitehall, St Thomas Eastern
Keynote Address
by
Dr the Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP
Prime Minister of Jamaica
At
NSHP Handover Ceremony; Whitehall, St Thomas Eastern
On
June 19 ,2025
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Thank you very much, PS Williams.
I want to have everyone’s attention for the next one hour, but if I can’t have it for one hour, I will settle for 10 minutes. Do I have your attention for 10 minutes? Undivided? I promise I will not keep you longer than that. I have some points that I wish for you to hear, internalize and to carry into the rest of the community.
The main problem of housing in Jamaica is the supply of houses. How are houses built in Jamaica? Well, we have private housing development. As I look in this community, I would say almost all of the houses here in Holland are privately built. You may have inherited a piece of land, or you may have purchased a piece of land, and you took your time, block on top of block each year you build a room until it is completed. Some persons may have gone and borrowed a mortgage either to buy an existing private house or to build one so that tells us that if we are to be building houses in Jamaica, you need financing. You need a market to supply financing to private people who would want to build their houses.
But sometimes you don’t have the land, and so you need land to be provided. The government can play a role in this. The government can play a role in providing the financing, supporting mortgages, or providing the land, or indeed developing the house themselves. And that is where the NHT comes in, the Housing Agency of Jamaica, the Jamaica Mortgage Bank, the Ministry of Housing and indeed the entity under its supervision, the New Social Housing Programme. All of these entities come in to help with the supply of housing in the market.
The NHT in particular plays an extremely important role in supporting housing. It does this by first of all, providing mortgages at interest rates that are very affordable, in fact, below market. It does this by providing financing to developers, and it does this by undertaking sometimes developments themselves.
Since becoming the Minister of housing, as Prime Minister, I have directed the NHT to focus its attention on building low-income housing for the primary reason that the private housing market is in a far better position to provide housing that you would consider lower, middle and upper middle housing. Where we have a real problem with supply is in lower income housing and therefore, we have asked the NHT to focus its effort there. I have asked the NHT to undertake the development of 43,000 housing solutions over the next five years.
Now, 43,000 might sound a lot, but the estimate is that if we are to truly satisfy housing demand, we need to have in train about 150,000 houses. If we were able to bring onboard 150,000 houses into the market, the impact of that would be as follows:
-Housing prices would go down.
-Informal communities would stop emerging overnight.
-You would have better living conditions for most Jamaicans.
So, the objective of any government now is not necessarily to focus on the demand for housing. There’s a whole heap of demand for housing, and you will solve the demand problem for housing once you get people employed, earning income and having interest rates that are accessible and reasonable.
Now, where the problem is, is to actually build the units, so we have under construction now or in contract or in some form of planning. We have 40,637 units that are under construction or award of contract, in procurement, planning and design, and what we call daily intake; people who just walk into the NHT and borrow to build.
We have 8,353 units that the NHT currently has under construction. Under contract award, we have 7,692 units. In procurement and negotiation, we have 12,207 units. In planning and design, we have 10,598 units. And in terms of the NHT’s daily support for people who are building and constructing, we have approximately, 2000 units. So, in total, 40,637 units that are in varying stages.
Now that is a significant number so we would almost fulfil the NHT commitment of 43,000 so that means in this year and in the years to come, you are going to see more houses come on the housing market. And in fact, I am pleased to state that it is not just the NHT that we have tasked with building out these 75,000 houses. We are satisfied that we have that 40,000 but we have developed the Bernard Lodge programme and that will deliver anywhere between 10 to 15,000 housing units. And then the HAJ, they have between 8000 to 14,000 units that are currently in planning, in contract, and actually under construction. So, we are well underway in meeting the commitment for 75,000 housing solutions.
Now, that is a real way in which the Jamaican people will benefit from housing. Yes, people will need better interest rates on the demand side. Yes, we can create all kinds of creative ways of funding grant programmes to help people to actually afford the houses but if you really want to make an impact on housing, you have to deal with the supply of houses. You have to actually build more house, and this government is building more houses.
Others will promise you houses; we deliver the houses. And by the way, every week I am somewhere in Jamaica. I’m coming to a community near you. We’re delivering one of these social houses. Sometimes we do four and five, today we are doing five. The other day I did seven. I’ve gone up as many as eight, and this programme is doing its own part in providing housing for all Jamaican.