Vision 2030 Jamaica is the national development plan for the country and the National Vision Statement is to make “Jamaica, the place of choice to live, work, raise families, and do business” and for that to become a reality, Jamaica has to continue to evolve.

 A key problem that I have been repeatedly asked to consider investing in solving is affordable housing. Over my years of working in Jamaica, first with Jamaica National Building Society, serving on the Jamaica Diaspora Advisory Board as the first Future Leaders Representative for the USA and then investing in Jamaica, the cost of housing has been a constant complaint.

Over 70,000 people are qualified for N.H.T. and some 150,000 houses are needed but Jamaica is not building enough for the teachers, nurses, young professionals and others to actually afford. This affordability crisis is not unique to Jamaica and is even occurring in the USA. It is not caused by any single problem but a key one is the access to capital for developers who are willing to build those houses and the need to use modern technology that reduces the cost of building climate-resilient houses that people actually want to live in. There is also a skilled labour issue that must be addressed.

When Prime Minister Holness spoke at a rebuild Jamaica event in New York earlier this year, I asked him about the housing needs, the labour issue and the ability of the Jamaican Diaspora to pool capital and help to solve the problem by providing equity funding to developers of affordable housing. He said that “The price of housing in Jamaica keeps going up precisely because the supply is low so if we have more David Mullings looking to crowd in we’d be very happy to have the investment” and that is exactly what we file with the S.E.C. to do.

After being approached by a few Jamaican developers who are building houses that fall in the J$8M to J$35M range and across the island, I finally decided to create a separate vehicle focused on Caribbean real estate that could legally and transparently raise capital to support this kind of impact investment.

Instead of complaining and asking others to do something, I decided to use my knowledge of US securities laws and my network to create a special purpose company that could sell shares to US persons under Reg CF of the JOBS Act after filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

My team and I previously used the JOBS Act to raise money from some members of the Jamaican Diaspora in the USA, a first-of-its-kind offering focused on Jamaica and the broader Caribbean, with the goal of investing across multiple asset classes, including private companies and real estate. The last two years of meeting with potential investors to scale the vision and the severe damage from both Hurricane Beryl and Hurricane Melissa, made it clear that the greatest need was housing.

Leveraging our past experience, we modified our planned Caribbean REIT to become Blue Mahoe Capital Caribbean and narrowed the focus to real estate in Jamaica, with a primary focus on affordable housing.

Local Jamaicans need high-quality affordable housing, and we in the diaspora want regulated and transparent ways to invest back home to support the economic development of Jamaica. It would be even better if that bridge were publicly traded, and so we continue to pursue the mini-IPO route that is available in the USA as one option to list and then open up the investment opportunity globally.

For generations, the Jamaican diaspora has sent money home, sent donations, provided scholarships, mentored people, invested in companies, both public and private, and invested in real estate individually or as small groups. Now we need to focus on doing things at scale in the same way that the Mexicans, Spanish and Chinese have been investing. They pool their money into a company with good governance, clear reporting and then execute.

Our goal right now is simple: help to build homes that working people can afford, while giving regular investors a regulated pathway to participate.

David P. A. Mullings is Founder, Chairman and CEO of Blue Mahoe Holdings, Ltd., a Bahamas-based impact investment firm focused on the Global South. He was the first Future Leaders Representative for the USA on the Jamaica Diaspora Advisory Board.