30,000 houses from China, and a big earthquake

Martin Henry

Tucked away among News in Brief in this newspaper on Big Earhquake Day last Tuesday (January 14) was a truly big story: 'Chinese company to develop 30,000 affordable housing units'.

The big earthquake did not arrive on the January 14 anniversary of the Great Kingston earthquake of 1907 as prophesied by another shameless attention-seeking soothsayer who is more loss than prophet. But the Chinese are serious people. If they are not tied up by government red tape, or robbed blind by the criminals who the State can't control, or sabotaged by labour unions, they will deliver those projected 30,000 affordable housing units over the next five years.

Jamaica needs every one of those houses, and many more. Not to mention needing the jobs associated with building the houses.

NOT ENOUGH TRAINED WORKERS

A month under a year ago, board chairman of the National Housing Trust, Easton Douglas, was solemnly advising us last February that the country does not currently have the capacity to build the 400,000 housing units which are needed, even if the Trust was not losing the $44 billion which the Government is to pull out of the Trust's funds over four years. There just aren't enough trained contractors and tradesmen, Chairman Douglas whined.

The Chinese company, Gao Zhen Real Estate and Development Company Ltd, is either stupid or knows something which Chairman Douglas and the NHT do not. They are proposing delivering around 6,000 units per year of low-income, high-quality housing solutions while creating sustainable employment for some 1,500 skilled and unskilled Jamaicans.

We don't know how many Chinese workers. There has been a great deal of resentment against the use of Chinese labour on the Chinese projects in Jamaica, despite the grudging admission that 'one a dem man deh can work like five Jameikan'.

The NHT should consider importing Chinese labour and technology for its own projects since the required skills, and work ethic, and building technology for more affordable housing units for poor people nuh dey yah. True, the people want jobs, but they want houses, too.

The NHT's idea of satisfying the demand for low-income housing is 48 units in Majesty Gardens in the prime minister's ramshackle South Western St Andrew constituency, a place which is a metaphor for housing stock decay and squalid accommodations, even for the working poor. And another few dozen units here and there to meet a demand of 400,000, as mentioned by the chairman of the Trust.

More realistically, a national housing-needs assessment for 1986-2006 projected that the country would need 15,000 new housing units per year just to keep up with population, not to fix the chronic backlog.

At the dawn of Independence, the Five-Year Independence Development Plan, 1963-1968, was projecting a need of 165,000 housing units over the next decade to satisfy the demand for new houses and the replacement of substandard structures. A number which is in the same ballpark of 15,000-16,000 units per year which the current Vision 2030 Plan is projecting in its Housing Sector Plan. In a good year, the cash-rich NHT manages to deliver about 2,500 housing unit!

The minister of development and welfare, Edward Seaga, in presenting the Independence Development Plan to Parliament on July 24, 1963, remarked, "There is also need for designing and reducing production cost so as to bring it [the price of housing] nearer within the reach of the population which is the largest sector [low-income earners]."

Some 80 per cent of NHT contributors did not use to qualify for mortgage benefits even for the cheapest units. The timid little low-income trust may have lowered that figure a bit. The CEO of the Chinese real estate company says the company's "beliefs are aligned with the commitment of the Government to lower the cost of housing, realising savings for prospective homeowners".

CRISIS CONFIRMED

As the Housing Sector Plan of Vision 2030 bluntly acknowledges, "Currently, there is a housing crisis in Jamaica, as the housing needs of a vast majority of Jamaican households, particularly those with low and moderate incomes, are not being met.

"The roots of this crisis can be traced," the document says, "to inadequate supply and the housing affordability challenge."

The Plan nonetheless envisions that, "Ideally, in the year 2030, every household should be living in a well-constructed dwelling unit. Realistically, however," it notes, "if housing standards are set very high, it will become even more difficult to close the housing affordability gap as most households will not be able to buy or rent these units. The vision of this sector plan, therefore, embodies the concept that housing represents a broad continuum of affordable and appropriate housing options related to the incomes of target groups." The Chinese are coming to help turn stifled vision into reality.

Jamaicans have a long history, going back to the immediate post-Emancipation free villages, of building their own homes and can be relied upon to continue to do so with some necessary assistance from the State.

For one thing, Government needs to stop playing around with land titling and push to regularise the ownership of hundreds of thousands of parcels of lands which then are moved from deadstock to bankable property which can serve as collateral for loans. More people should be supported to build on own land, rather than waiting on Mr Douglas' incapacitated agency for high-priced 'scheme houses'.

I see where one parish council (St Catherine) is being accused of squatting on lands owned by another state agency (the dead Jamaica Railway Corporation) and defending its actions as a public good. A third of the Jamaican population is estimated to be living as squatters. The Government, more particularly the Queen as head of State, owns tens of thousands of acres of 'Crown lands' which she will never use. Her agents in Cabinet should make thousands of acres of these lands available at 'affordable' prices to citizens for housing and other uses.

And, of course, Government should do everything possible within law to fast-track and fully back the Chinese development which will not only deliver affordable housing solutions but will set off a major earthquake in the housing and real estate market that has been contriving to keep supply low and prices high. Welcome, China.

Martin Henry is a university administrator and public affairs commentator. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and medhen@gmail.com.