NHT focused on affordable, low-income solutions – PM

Prime Minister Andrew Holness says the National Housing Trust (NHT) has been restructured to focus on providing increased access to affordable and low-income housing solutions.

Holness, who was addressing the handover of a three-bedroom unit under the New Social Housing Programme at Schoolfield District in Santa Cruz, St Elizabeth, recently, said that the restructuring has enabled many Jamaicans to secure a mortgage who could not afford to do so before.

He noted that the reform was spurred by, among other things, a Caribbean Policy Research Institute study, which highlighted the need for greater balance in how NHT houses were being distributed.

“One of the conclusions was that the NHT was misdirected in its policy emphasis and, essentially, by virtue of the persons who are benefiting through the trust, it [would appear] that persons of greater means, of higher incomes, are getting greater access to housing than the poor,” Holness pointed out.

LOWER INCOME

He said that at his instruction, the NHT board conducted a study of all its operations and also brought in a professional consulting firm, and from those processes a report was generated which “laid out what was necessary to transform the NHT and where its benefits could be more equitably disbursed throughout the country. This means that lower income … poorer households, should be able to get access to lower-income houses”.

“And so, we did two things. First, we instructed the NHT to build more housing units, but more than that, we have now instructed them that all their new housing solutions must be focused on affordable and low-income housing solutions,” he emphasised.

“We have all seen, over the past five years, where the NHT’s lending policies have been restructured to make them more accessible and where there is now an option where three persons can partner. Also, we have increased the loan ceiling … reduced the interest rates. We have made some serious changes to the formal housing sector, using the NHT,” he noted further.

Meanwhile, the prime minister said that the Government is closely looking at a rent-to-own initiative to make the dream of home ownership a reality for more Jamaicans.

“We’re going to develop housing that we can lease to persons … where they can pay for it over time and then, eventually, they can have it,” he noted.

Holness said it has always been a policy of his administration that no one should be left behind in terms of home ownership, regardless of social status.

The prime minister noted that other housing concepts are on the horizon as the Government moves to enable more people to own their own home.

Meanwhile, he said that the administration expects to build 70,000 inexpensive housing solutions in the next five years to tackle the issue of illegal settlements.