“People Coming to Us Who Were Kicked Out”: COVID-19 Drives a Surge in Housing Requests to a Christian Charity

• Food For The Poor said housing requests rose as COVID-19 brought job losses and evictions
• It was receiving more than 100 applications a month
• It was building about 30 houses a month
• It also launched a campaign to plant 10,000 fruit trees

The COVID-19 pandemic hit Jamaica’s housing as well as its health system. In October 2020 the Jamaica Observer reported that Food For The Poor, the Christian charity that is one of the country’s biggest builders of homes for the poor, was seeing more demand for houses as job losses and evictions spread.

Finance director Kivette Silvera described the change. “We have been getting so much more applications for houses,” she said, adding that people who had been put out of their homes were now coming to the charity. “We consistently get over 100 applications per month from persons who are in need of a house,” she said.

According to Silvera, many applicants already lived in poor conditions where sanitation and social distancing were difficult even before the pandemic. The charity was building about 30 houses a month, far fewer than the number of monthly requests.

Food For The Poor also looked at food security. In August 2020 it launched a “Fruits for the Poor” campaign, distributing 5,000 seedlings at first, with a goal of planting 10,000 fruit trees by year-end, giving two to four trees to each household.

The numbers show a housing gap that no single charity can close: more than 100 requests a month against about 30 houses built. They also show how quickly renters can lose their homes when income stops, and how little protection many Jamaican tenants have. For churches, that is a call to think about emergency rent help, transitional rooms and land that could host charity-built homes. For the diaspora, whose remittances kept many households going during the pandemic, it is a reminder that a secure roof at home is often the best investment a family can make.

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