“The Poor Can’t Buy House”: A Columnist Asks Why Church Leaders Are Silent on Affordable Homes

• An Observer column said rental housing, not home ownership, is the real option for the poor
• It named Anglican Bishop Howard Gregory and Baptist Rev Karl Johnson
• The writer proposed tax relief for schemes with at least 30 per cent rental units
• He called the promise of a home for everyone “a cruel joke”

In September 2015, Jamaica Observer columnist Franklin Johnston made the case that the country had been chasing the wrong housing dream. Home ownership, he argued, was out of reach for most poor Jamaicans, and policy should instead be built around good-quality rental homes.

He put it bluntly: “Sirs, the poor can’t buy house; rental housing is their option.” In his view, the market of people able to buy was small, while the market for rental housing was large. He described the political slogan “you can own a home of your own” as “a cruel joke.”

Johnston also turned his attention to the pulpit. He wrote that “Bishop Howard Gregory of the Anglican and Rev Karl Johnson of the Baptist pews seem nonplussed that developers do not want to build affordable housing.” The line was a pointed challenge to two of the island’s most prominent church voices to take up housing for the poor as a moral issue.

His proposals were practical. He suggested land-tax relief and other concessions for housing schemes in which 30 per cent or more of the units are for rent, an initial $50 billion aimed at encouraging rental development, and moving some welfare money into housing subsidies. Rental homes, he said, would suit workers who are posted around the island, listing the “teacher, nurse, police, doctor, civil servant, parson and the private sector.” He also referred to Andrew Holness’s house controversy and criticised Delroy Chuck’s approach to inner-city redevelopment.

The column matters because it frames housing as something churches should speak about, not just governments and developers. For congregations that own land and hold moral weight in communities, the question it raised in 2015 still stands: if the poor mainly need safe, affordable places to rent, what role will the church play in making sure they exist?

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