As its transformative New Social Housing Programme (NSHP) enters an ambitious second phase, the Government of Jamaica today (August 23) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with ARC Properties Limited for the contribution of housing units. 

The signing, completed this morning at the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) in St Andrew, sees the Andrew Holness administration doubling down on its commitment to provide housing solutions to society’s most vulnerable. 

For her part, Audrey Sewell, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, disclosed that the National Housing Trust (NHT) has contributed J$300 million in funding to the NSHP, which has handed over keys in all but two Jamaican parishes.

Through the MOU, ARC Properties becomes the first private sector entity to answer Holness’ six-month call for the business community to get involved in the programme. 

Ashley Ann Horne, managing director of ARC Manufacturing, explained that the collaboration forms part of a wider drive to maximise the impact of the company’s corporate social responsibility.

Surrounded by Government technocrats and other high-ranking officials from the NHT and Housing Agency of Jamaica (HAJ) at Jamaica House, Horne declared that ARC Properties will subsidise construction costs to ensure more citizens are included under the social safety net programme.

“Every company on this island has been granted a licence to operate by society and, in return, we not only have a duty to conduct ourselves in a manner that upholds the tenets of ethics and morality, but we also have a patriotic duty to the country to ensure that purpose and community upliftment are always at the heart of our business operations,” she said.

“This reality is the reason why we’re here today. It’s the sole reason why we’re the first to answer the prime minister’s call for the private sector to stand with him. We are going to partner with this initiative proudly, and we will do what we can to increase the construction of housing for the most vulnerable in our society under this New Social Housing Programme at no cost to the Government of Jamaica,” added Horne.

In his keynote address, Holness said that 89 units—comprising 203 bedrooms for some 389 Jamaicans in 37 constituencies islandwide—have been constructed in the first phase by the Government since the programme’s conception in 2020. 

According to the prime minister, under the second phase partnership with ARC Properties and Kinetic Engineering Services Limited, the goal is to set a ‘minimum shelter standard’ while providing 10,000 housing solutions for those who meet special criteria to be beneficiaries of the social housing initiative. 

“You can consider this part of our social safety net, like PATH. We don’t always meet [the standards] and there are many outside the social safety net. Identification is a very important part of the establishment of a social safety net,” mused Holness.

Other factors that weigh in the beneficiary selection process for social housing include: 

• Employment status, where priority will be given to those who earn minimum wage or are unemployed and/or having large families with disabled dependents and children of ‘school age’,
• Whether the beneficiary is on an applicant list submitted by their local member of parliament, reviewed by a Government oversight committee, and,
• Being situated on land they have permission to habitate with no proper housing.

Holness further noted that around 6,000 households nationally are in need of new or upgraded housing solutions, conceding that those estimates may be significantly higher.

Notwithstanding the challenges, an “almost overcome” prime minister said he was “very happy to see ARC Properties coming on board”. 

“This was designed to deal with persons who are unemployed, they have no income, and, therefore, they couldn’t qualify for a mortgage. They have no means, but the moral standard of our society, which aligns with our social safety net, is that there is a minimum standard of housing people should be living in,” argued the prime minister.

Holness acknowledged “social media criticism” of the project, which he claimed stems from a historical distrust of the state but assured that, with a robust screening and oversight process, no nepotism or favouritism would factor in the distribution of solutions under the New Social Housing Programme.

“We know that is how Jamaicans think and so we go to great lengths to ensure that the people who are benefitting are genuinely in need. Nobody [can] say that the beneficiary only got it because of who they know,” he said.

Keith Duncan, president of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ), lauded the MOU signing as “a step in the right direction”, though admitting that housing needs gaps, particularly for those on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum, are significant.