Kerr-Jarrett backs high-rises to solve MoBay housing crisis

WESTERN BUREAU:

The Government and private-sector developers have been urged to build out more multistorey residences across the western city of Montego Bay to drive down housing costs and influence public order and safety.

That call has come from prominent businessman and developer Mark Kerr-Jarrett, who believes that tapping high-density models could not only transform the Montego Bay skyline but spark a re-engineering of society.

“I think when it comes to affordable housing, we have to look at a totally new model,” he said during a panel discussion at last weekend’s Montego Bay Expo.

However, Kerr-Jarrett, who has lobbied for the regularising of informal communities for years, is hoping that housing will be able to catch up with the pace of new jobs projected for the services industry in the parish of St James. He argued that Jamaicans ought to dispense with the expensive notion of “homes with grass around it”, preferring instead high-density accommodations with common areas that would reduce per-capita construction costs.

“What we are currently building are middle-income and lower-middle-income. It is not affordable, so we need to think of a totally new solution that is cost-effective,” Kerr-Jarrett said at the Montego Bay Convention Centre.

“You are going to need quite a few concessions from the Government to meet that price point, but once you create those formal housing areas, you will reduce crime, you are also giving people dignity and security of tenure, and getting the crime reduced, you will claw back a lot of GDP.”

Kerr-Jarrett was among several panellists who lauded the Government’s effort to increase the housing stock in western Jamaica but lobbied for lower building and purchase costs to satisfy the demand of the working class.

Norman Brown, chairman of the Housing Agency of Jamaica (HAJ) Limited, said that the entity’s mandate is to slash the cost of houses to about $5 million each.

The HAJ is also tasked with the formalising unregulated settlements. Brown is convinced that revitalising neighbourhoods could help to reduce the deficit.

“If we can fix those communities as well, it would help to alleviate some of the shortages that we are experiencing,” he said.

The resort city has an estimated more than 22 unplanned settlements.

In the keynote presentation, Dwayne Berbick, manager of corporate and public affairs at the National Housing Trust, provided data that showed a significant increase in housing starts by the state-run entity in recent years, but called for greater participation from residents of St James as job seekers migrated from rural areas to hunt work in the thriving tourism sector.

With a rise in room count expected projected, along with the emergence of the lucrative global services sector attracting more than 20,000 workers to the western region, businesswoman Angella Whitter also said that affordable homes for the ordinary man must be a priority.