“Is Five Years Now I Applied”: A Redwood Mother Still Waits for a Charity House

• Semone Butler of Redwood, St Catherine, applied for a Food For The Poor house five years earlier
• The charity’s stated waiting time was six months to a year
• She lives in a one-room house with a cracked foundation
• She was photographed carrying her daughter through floodwater to sit exams

Semone Butler, a mother of four and grandmother of two from Redwood, St Catherine, told the Gleaner in May 2017 that she had been waiting five years for a house from Food For The Poor, the Christian charity that builds homes for poor families. The organisation’s stated waiting period was six months to a year.

“I just need a house. Is five years now I applied… all the papers to show that the taxes are paid, and up to now, not a word,” she said. Butler lives in a single room with a cracked foundation and a roof that lets in water. She earns a living rearing chickens and doing hair part-time.

She came to wider attention after being photographed carrying her 17-year-old daughter, Denelia Kelly, through floodwater so the teenager could reach school for her CSEC exams. The heavy rains had shown how exposed the family is. “The foundation of the house is cracked… if we get anything as heavy as two weeks ago, it will fall down,” she said.

Butler said she was tired of retelling her situation. “I am tired of doing it. I find myself repeating it over and over,” she told the newspaper.

Her story shows the other side of charity housing: demand far outstrips supply, and applicants must first prove land and tax paperwork before they can even join the queue. For churches, which often vouch for applicants and know which families are most at risk, it is a call to help members navigate the process and to press for faster, fairer allocation. For Jamaicans at home and abroad who give to housing charities, it is a reminder that behind every waiting list is a family living one storm away from losing its shelter.

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