The Urban Development Corporation (UDC) will develop more than 10,000 housing solutions, prioritising individuals in the tourism, business process outsourcing (BPO,) and quick service sectors.
This was disclosed by Prime Minister, Dr. the Most Hon. Andrew Holness, during the UDC’s breakfast session with stakeholders from various sectors, at the AC Kingston Hotel, on November 26.
“The UDC has lands in Whitehouse in Westmoreland where the plan is to build 1,000 housing solutions there and they will be of varying grades, whether it is low income…middle income, but you will have a housing solution for every price point. In Negril, we are targeting 1,200 housing solutions that the UDC will build. In Ocho Rios, we are targeting 1,000 housing solutions,” he noted.
“We are also going to be building out in areas where we have intensive BPO development taking place, as in Hellshire and Braeton. In Hellshire we are looking to build 2,000 units, in Braeton 2,000 units and in Caymanas, which will become the new centre of the logistics industry, we are planning to build 4,000 housing solutions,” the Prime Minister added.
Dr. Holness noted that more details will be provided on the initiative at a later time but noted that this is separate from the 70,000 housing solutions through the National Housing Trust (NHT), Housing Agency of Jamaica (HAJ) and the New Social Housing Project (NSHP).
“They are already underway in developing those housing solutions, so we are bringing essentially more than 10,000 housing solutions to the market through the UDC,” he stated.
Meanwhile, he said the solutions will assist in providing affordable housing for workers in critical sectors.
“We have attracted the labour without the facilities for labour- housing, transportation, schools – and we have been in a mode of trying to catch up in providing the housing solutions for the labour that supports major industries in Jamaica,” the Prime Minister said.
“We have to leapfrog now and have a critical mass of housing for our workers in the tourism sector and the BPO sector,” Dr. Holness added.
He explained that this will also assist in providing more employment opportunities for individuals, particularly in rural communities.
“A part of the challenge we face is that when I go into some rural communities, I am told by the young people I meet, ‘I can’t find any work, I don’t have any jobs’, but when I talk to business people in tourism, business process outsourcing, quick services, they say they can’t find people,” the Prime Minister said.
“What is happening here? There is not just a structurally, but a frictional challenge in the labour market and we have to help the labour market to clear that by providing housing close to where people work or providing proper transportation. So, one of the challenges you will hear from people who work in the BPO sector and in tourism is that they just can’t find anywhere to live. They can’t find affordable place to rent or affordable place to purchase and so we have to address this,” he said.
Furthermore, Dr. Holness charged the UDC to accelerate its mandate of divesting more parcels of land to the private sector.
“We have already given a policy mandate that the UDC should divest a certain percentage of its unused asset, particularly land. I believe we had set that target at 15 per cent and the UDC has been divesting, it has divested several parcels of land, but this process has to be accelerated,” the Prime Minister said.
“So, the UDC Board has been given that mandate to ensure that all their assets are fully utilised and we understand, we know that the UDC itself will not be able to utilise all its assets internally and therefore it must utilise the public-private partnership framework to have its assets utilised or to divest them if they are not using the assets or if they are not of immediate strategic value,” he said.
The breakfast session also sought to invite partnerships in major development projects in various areas, inclusive of the Fireworks Festival 2024 in Kingston, Ocho Rios and Montego Bay.
— JIS
