Wilson announces housing plans for Westmoreland Western

WESTERN BUREAU:

Moreland Wilson, the newly elected member of Parliament for Westmoreland Western, says he is targeting the construction of 1,000 affordable housing solutions in the constituency over the next four years.

According to Wilson, over 50 per cent of persons living in Westmoreland Western - which covers the five electoral divisions of Friendship, Grange Hill, Little London, Sheffield, and Negril – live in wooden houses that have become unsuitable for living, owing to many factors.

“My aim is to do one (housing development) in each division, reason being the communities have expanded quite rapidly, with a high number of students graduating from schools yearly into the job market. The plan is to do at least 1,000 housing solutions in the next four years. However, we may have to temper those expectations because of COVID-19,” said Wilson.

“For some of these developments, we have the plans already. We now have to get the subdivisions approved, and all that, but with COVID-19, it’s going to move as fast as molasses in getting things going,” he said.

MOST BOARD HOUSES

In an interview with The Gleaner, Wilson said that Westmoreland is the parish with the most board houses because of limited access to lands.

“It’s not that we are short of land. People don’t have access to them, so we are looking to develop housing units across the constituency,” said Wilson. “We have not had any form of systemic housing solution in almost 20 years. One of my plans is not only to depend on what Prime Minister Andrew Holness has done, but also to encourage developers, private and otherwise, to come in and provide housing solutions.”

According to the lawmaker, preliminary talks have commenced with the Sugar Transformation Unit in the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries with a view to making lands available for housing solutions in the parish.“I have started some preliminary discussions with personnel from the Sugar Transformation Unit about possible lands that they could make available to develop into housing solutions,” Wilson told The Gleaner.

“I have been talking to people with private properties who want to develop them into residential communities, but they need help with capital and the engineers to do the subdivisions. I have, potentially, three major developments in addition to what the prime minister has done, albeit it will take a while to come on stream in getting the requisite approval.”