Handing Over Ceremony, HAJ’s Edmund Ridge Project, Rhyne Park, Montego Bay, St James
Keynote Address
By
Dr the Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP
Prime Minister of Jamaica
At the
Handing Over Ceremony, HAJ’s Edmund Ridge Project, Rhyne Park, Montego Bay, St James
On
April 25, 2025
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I am eager to tour these units. I recall when I broke ground here, in 2019, there was great anticipation that the project would be completed before now, but a few months after breaking ground, we were impacted by the COVID pandemic and when we are having these conversations about the timeline for project completion, somehow, we forget that we were impacted by a global pandemic.
And for the HAJ and the NHT, as I mentioned earlier, at another event, it has disrupted the delivery timelines and, in this project, it had significant disruptions. Nevertheless, the project is now underway full steam ahead. There are 739 housing solutions that will be constructed here. Phase one and phase two are already completed, I believe they are occupied already and those communities are flourishing communities, you already have a citizens association in place. Phase three is already sold out and Phase four, five and six are underway in varying stages so this project is well underway.
The HAJ I’m sure wanted me to see this project because I’ve been doing quite a bit with the NHT. In fact, today I just broke ground for the development of another scheme with about 418 new housing solutions and that housing scheme is the Brookside Housing Development in Spot Valley. And a few weeks ago, the 10th of April, I broke ground in Barrett Hall for another housing development.
You see, on a fortnightly basis, I am doing something for housing, and I’ve been doing this now for the last three or four months which tells you that we have many projects. Not in a pipeline, they used to say we have projects in a pipeline, and when you turn the pipe hear just the gushing sound of air but for this administration, we have a trailer load. We have projects on track and so we, at every stop we deliver the projects. We have a train load project to deliver to the people of Jamaica.
This is really the first time that any government could make its performance record its campaign platform. I want Jamaica to consider that, that you now have an administration that could make its performance record its campaign platform, but we know that for the electorate, it is not sufficient to go and say, here is what I have done because in our democracy you also have other elements saying here is what we plan to do, here is what we propose to do so it is not a beauty contest of performance.
It is sometimes a beauty contest about who can make the better promises, and oftentimes in populations where you have what is called information asymmetry, meaning that some people will have full information, but most people will only have partial information. The people with full information, they’re the ones who really have the power because they take advantage of ignorance and lack of knowledge, and they go and make all kinds of promises playing upon persons disgruntlement, disaffection, playing on emotions to get them to support promises that sometimes don’t make sense or can’t be fulfilled.
What we have done as a government, recognizing that it is the promising season, we have done two critical things. The first is that we have made sure that anything that the government does or put it another way, everything that the government does, we are going to bring it to the attention of the people. So we have these kinds of events where we showcase what the government has done because there are so many lies being told and misinformation being spread that even sometimes when the things are steering you in the face because it has been crafted in a particular narrative, you come away with a view that nuttn nah gwaan, that’s the common nomenclature that captures the essence of how some people; nuttn nah gwaan and this is absolutely not the case.
When you look at this housing development of Edmund Ridge and you see the quality of the housing that is developed here, this is nothing like Operation Pride. I want to make that point clear. If you compare what this government has done relative to what the previous governments have done, then you can come to the conclusion that something good a gwaan inna Jamaica. Because if you compare these kinds of development to Operation Pride development then your conclusion would be that what was happening before was Operation Shame, and it is these developments that we are doing now that is really creating communities of pride, communities in which the homeowners feel that they have a really good investment, a really respectful investment, an investment in shelter that gives them dignity. And that is why we showcase these developments for the people to counter the false narrative and the negative attitudes and the falsehoods that are being carried in various media and spaces. That is why we bring these to the attention of the people. Something is happening in Jamaica. Something good is happening in housing.
The NHT has been tasked with delivering 43,000 housing solutions. The HAJ has been tasked with delivering 14,000 housing solutions. The NHT has just over 19,575 housing solutions that will commence construction within the next two years. In fact, 11,322 housing solutions are currently at the contract phase of development, meaning that they have gone through procurement and now we are ready to sign with the contractors to begin construction. These include major schemes such as Mount Nelson in Manchester, which I broke ground for a couple weeks ago, that’s 1,758 units- Longville Park Pen, 2077 units, that’s in Clarendon- and Barrett Hall, which I just mentioned, 1,565 units here in St James.
The HAJ already has approximately 4,000 housing units that are in varying stages of construction but the HAJ has a special mandate which distinguishes it from the NHT. The NHT acts as market support for mortgages and housing financing. It does development, it works with developers, and it finances development, but the HAJ is distinct from the NHT because the HAJ has a settlement regularization mandate.
So, in Jamaica, because formal housing development, whether by the private sector or through the public sector through entities like the HAJ or the NHT, formal housing development has been very slow and in the last three decades housing developments have been in such a state that it has not kept pace with the demand that exists for housing. And so they developed over the last three or four decades, a serious housing gap of about 150,000 housing solutions and you get a sense of that housing gap as the chairman of the HAJ pointed out when he advertised 140 housing units and 600 persons turned up. But we have seen this before at Catherine Estate, we advertised something like 1600 units and 11,000 persons applied.
The demand for housing is great and that demand that exists, is precisely because the supply side of housing slowed down dramatically over those three or four decades and that slowdown was primarily because our economy wasn’t functioning properly. But more than that, we did not have the resident skills in construction to take on mega projects and so even now we are still suffering from that and we need now to develop our contractor pool to be able to take on massive projects.
Announcing 739 units may sound like a lot, but 739 units compared to the 70,000 that we need to construct compared to the actual 150,000 that we need to solve the problem is small. Even the 19,575 that the NHT is going through the process with, that’s small relative to the big problem. If we’re going to truly and genuinely make progress in providing the houses, we not only have to treat with the financing through the supply side, meaning supporting mortgages and supporting funding for developers, but we’re gonna actually have to now develop the contracting capabilities to have contractors who can take on mega projects. We would like to see housing projects in the region of five to ten thousand houses being developed at a time because once you start to increase the supply of housing, that is when the price of housing will stabilize and even reduce once we start to get into the size of housing developments, that gives the economies of scale.
To get that we not only have to attract the contractors that have the skills and develop our local contractors with the skills, we must also find the lands that are suitable for development and that has been another critical constraint on us expanding the supply side of housing, finding the land. And the third element is to have the budget to put in place the infrastructure.
When we talk about this lovely development, this site is on the ridge of a hill. This site was acquired in 2009. We could not find a contractor who would partner with us to develop this site and do the development in such a way that the price point would be affordable to the average Jamaican. I want you to pay attention to this. Don’t believe the people who come to you and tell you, yes, we can solve the problem, and we sell you a horse that can’t fly. There are certain realities that we have to consider.
From 2009, this plan was on the books to be done but couldn’t be done. Couldn’t find a contractor who could do it, price was a concern, and the terrain was a concern. In fact, the concern for the contractor who we got at the time was that if they were to clear this terrain, level the land to build the houses, then this could not be an affordable house. This would be upper-income housing, but that’s not what the mandate of the housing agency is. The mandate of the housing agency is to build affordable housing, so we couldn’t go with that one.
Eventually, we found a contractor in Henan Fifth who would be willing to bring their construction technology and knowhow and their construction management to the table and they have been doing a wonderful job in managing the site, doing the construction, dealing with all the challenges that come with such a difficult terrain. And as you can see today, even after the setback of COVID, we are well on our way with building out affordable housing at Edmund Ridge.
So, for those who choose to believe the negative narrative, the false narrative here is a visual, physical and real contradiction of the false notions to which you hold. It is not just Edmund Ridge that we are building, unlike what the previous governments have done under Operation Pride, where they build schemes, leave them half finished, tell people to go on land on occupy the land without any titles, without any form of infrastructure. This administration is not going to leave any development incomplete or unfinished. We’re not going to put people into housing solutions that turn out to be a nightmare for them. What we have done here is to build housing that will create an asset for you.
What we have done here is to bring your dream, and your aspiration for a house to reality, and the HAJ has been doing that in Sand Down Palms in Portmore. HAJ is doing that. Catherine Estate is another housing scheme that was on the books from 2009. Again, was not done. This administration came and we have brought that to fruition. We’re doing 1,650 houses and we’re 50% completed there. And we have some other lands in Portmore that we have announced that we’re going to be doing housing developments there.
Overall, we have over 4,000 housing solutions that the HAJ will bring to market, including what we’re doing here. I wanted to make the point here that our housing policy is effective. Our housing policy is thoughtful and our housing policy is not just aspirational, but it is practical and realistic. If you really want a house, then this is the housing policy to support: the policy that is comprehensive, the policy that understands the challenges and the policy that is consistent.
This administration has ensured that we spend the money on developing infrastructure. So we are the administration that before we build any housing scheme, we make sure we put in the road, the proper sidewalk. You see right across there is a massive tank which we will rehabilitate, and we just built a new tank. Last time I was here, I turned on a massive water supply project so that these developments will have water so that 10 years down the road, I don’t hear people putting up placards, “We want water, we want water.” They never demonstrate to say, why did the politicians tell us to come and live here and never give us water? They never say that they went to live there where there was no infrastructure and then we have to come and provide water.
The electorate continues in this mould. This administration has to break that. When we say we are going to build a house or we’re going to do a development, it is not incomplete or incremental. The people who live here will never have to go and put a placard about for 30 years they never have water. They’re getting a development with water and proper roads and proper sidewalks and sewage.
A great part of the budget of the HAJ is spent on correcting housing developments by the previous administration. Now the opposition talking about housing, we have to spend. There’s a housing development in St Mary that we have to take the NHT’S resources, over a billion dollars to go and put in roads and sewage that the previous administration just tell the people, go and live there. And people build up all kinds of big structures there, no road, no water, no sewage but yet they come and talk about what they’re going to do for housing. Tell us how you’re going to correct the problems you had created with your former policies.
So we have to put on display what we are doing so that the people of Jamaica who don’t know, and some choose not to know, to have to put it in their face to let them know that this administration is the difference in housing. This administration has the plan for housing, but more than that, it is this administration that can consistently deliver housing for you.
So, my friends, the housing that you’re seeing here is what you call a mixed development. We have two-bedroom bungalows and we have some three-bedrooms. We have townhouses as well as apartments. So it’s a mixed development, but not just mixed in the type of housing, but it’s also mixed-income because you have housing at differing price points. So this will give a great opportunity for you to build your family here. This will give particularly our tourism workers a great opportunity to acquire proper housing. And when we say tourism workers, sometimes the interpretation would be just persons who work in hotels.
No, we are also catering to our taxi drivers, the people who support. The people who support the tourism sector, the people who work in the craft markets, the tour guides, those are also critical members of the tourism sector. And I’m certain, based upon what the HAJ has told me, that there is a very strong representation of persons who work in the tourism industry already living here.
We are very, very pleased today to bring this housing development as a microcosm of all the other housing developments that we are doing across Jamaica and to show you the difference between what we do for housing and what the previous administration did under their flagship programme called Operation Pride, which was really nothing but bring headache and quite a bit of shame to persons who occupied or currently occupy those lands for which this present administration is spending billions of dollars to repair, to correct and to upgrade. We will not make those errors. What we will do is to ensure that when you make your investment here, it is secure, it is complete, and you can have the dignity of having a proper home.
God bless you and thank you.