Falmouth, Jamaica — 27 September 2023
The Prime Minister handed over 77 housing solutions at the Windsor Hills development in Trelawny, with contracts being finalised to commence work on an additional 1,560 units at Dry Valley in the same parish. Hanover, the island’s smallest parish, is receiving 365 housing solutions at the Pointe development and 120 additional units at Winchester — a combined programme that signals sustained NHT commitment to the western parishes beyond the dominant St. James market.
Trelawny and Hanover share a geographic and economic reality that differs from their more prominent western neighbour. Both parishes are less urbanised than St. James, with smaller labour markets, lower population density, and housing need that is real but less visible than the acute shortages of Montego Bay. The NHT’s decision to commit significant housing solutions to both parishes — 1,560 units in Trelawny’s Dry Valley alone — reflects a recognition that the 70,000-solution programme cannot be delivered exclusively in the island’s largest urban centres.
Windsor Hills and the Handover Ceremony
The handover of 77 units at Windsor Hills is a meaningful event for the families who received them, even if the number appears modest in the context of Jamaica’s total housing need. Each unit represents a family’s transition from rental or informal housing into formal homeownership — with the title, the security, and the financial equity that comes with it. Housing handover ceremonies also serve a political and institutional function: they make visible the process of housing delivery, connecting the abstract planning targets of the NHT’s annual programme to the concrete reality of keys in hands.
Trelawny’s Dry Valley development, with contracts being finalised for 1,560 units, is the more significant story in volume terms. A 1,560-unit development is substantial for a parish the size of Trelawny, and it will represent a meaningful expansion of the parish’s formal housing stock once built. The scheme sits within the broader NHT pipeline of 15,009 solutions to be commenced in the 2024-25 fiscal year, of which more than 96 per cent target lower-middle-income to low-income contributors.
Hanover’s Housing Pipeline
Hanover — the parish adjoining Trelawny to the west, with Lucea as its capital — receives 365 housing solutions at Pointe and 120 at Winchester. The combined 485 units are significant relative to the parish’s size and baseline housing stock. Hanover’s economy is anchored by agriculture and, increasingly, by luxury tourism on the western coast around Tryall and Negril’s western fringe. The housing need in Hanover is driven by the same tourism-economy dynamic visible in Montego Bay and St. James, but at a lower volume.
“The NHT building in Trelawny and Hanover is exactly what a national housing programme should do,” said Dean Jones, Managing Director of Jamaica Homes. “Jamaica is not just Kingston and Montego Bay. Families in Falmouth, Lucea, and the communities of Trelawny’s interior have the same right to formal homeownership as families in the capital. The 1,560 units at Dry Valley will be transformative for Trelawny — not in a year, but over the course of the decade it takes to build and fill them.”
Tourism Corridor Housing Demand
Trelawny has gained particular attention in recent years as the site of the Falmouth Cruise Ship Pier — one of the world’s largest cruise ship berthing facilities — and as the location of several major hotel and villa developments. The tourism infrastructure creates both employment and housing demand in the parish. Workers employed in the cruise tourism and hospitality economy need affordable housing within reasonable commuting distance of their workplaces. NHT investment in Trelawny’s residential base serves that demand directly, ensuring that the workers who make the parish’s tourism economy function can afford to live there.
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