NHT Targets Clarendon With Hummingbird Meadows and Longville Meadows as Parish Gains 2,000-Plus Housing Solutions

May Pen, Jamaica — 3 October 2023

Applications for Hummingbird Meadows — a new National Housing Trust scheme in Bird’s Hill, Clarendon, 11 kilometres from May Pen town centre — opened on October 3, 2023, adding to a growing NHT pipeline in Jamaica’s fifth-largest parish. The scheme joins the Longville Meadows development, whose first phase comprises 564 stand-alone residential units with a second phase planned for an additional 1,500 low-income housing solutions. Together, the two developments position Clarendon as a significant destination in the NHT’s programme to deliver housing solutions to lower-middle-income and low-income contributors across the island.

Clarendon occupies a central geographic position in Jamaica — bounded by St. Catherine to the north, St. Thomas to the east, Manchester and St. Elizabeth to the west, and the Caribbean Sea to the south. May Pen, the parish capital, sits approximately 50 kilometres west of Kingston and is connected to the capital by the Highway 2000 toll road, making it a viable residential option for workers commuting to Kingston while seeking more affordable housing than the capital and its immediate suburbs offer. The one-hour commute threshold — within which Clarendon sits for most of its northern areas — has made the parish increasingly attractive to first-time buyers priced out of the Kingston Metropolitan Area and Portmore.

Hummingbird Meadows: Location and Eligibility

Hummingbird Meadows’ location in Bird’s Hill, Clarendon — 11 kilometres from May Pen — places it in a relatively accessible position relative to the parish’s main service centre. May Pen has a functioning town centre with market facilities, commercial banking, government services, and a transport hub connecting to Kingston, Mandeville, and south coast communities. A development 11 kilometres from May Pen is sufficiently close to access those services while potentially offering more space and less urban density than an in-town location.

NHT scheme applicants are typically required to have made NHT contributions for a minimum qualifying period, meet the income and affordability criteria for the specific scheme’s loan product, and not own any other property. The points-based ballot system, introduced in 2023, prioritises applicants with the most need: first-time buyers without existing property ownership, contributors who have never accessed a previous NHT loan, and applicants whose current housing situation is classified as inadequate.

Longville Meadows and the 1,500-Unit Second Phase

The Longville Meadows development is the more ambitious of the two Clarendon schemes in terms of scale. The first phase of 564 stand-alone residential units represents a meaningful addition to Clarendon’s formal housing stock — stand-alone units with their own lots, rather than the apartment or townhouse typology that is more common in urban NHT schemes. The second phase of 1,500 low-income solutions, if delivered as programmed, would make Longville Meadows one of the largest single NHT developments outside the Kingston Metropolitan Area in recent years.

The low-income designation for Longville Meadows Phase 2 indicates that the scheme is specifically targeting contributors at the lower end of the NHT loan eligibility range — workers earning at or below the income threshold for standard NHT financing. This segment has historically been the most underserved by both the NHT and the private market, as the economics of building for very low incomes are challenging. The NHT’s willingness to programme 1,500 low-income solutions in Clarendon reflects the Trust’s public mandate to serve all contributor segments.

“Clarendon’s housing pipeline is a reflection of the demographic and economic reality of central Jamaica,” said Dean Jones, Managing Director of Jamaica Homes. “May Pen and its surroundings have been a growth corridor for years — the Highway 2000 connection to Kingston changed everything, because it brought Clarendon within commuting distance of Jamaica’s largest job market. The NHT is right to be investing there. First-time buyers in Clarendon can get more space for less money than in Kingston or Portmore, and the transport connection means they don’t have to sacrifice access to employment.”

The Inverness Property and Environmental Assessment

The NHT has also been advancing the Inverness Property project in Clarendon, located 25 kilometres southeast of May Pen. An environmental impact assessment was commissioned in early 2023 — a standard requirement for large-scale housing developments under Jamaica’s National Environmental and Planning Agency regulations. The environmental assessment process is a necessary but sometimes time-consuming step in Jamaica’s development approval pipeline. Its completion for the Inverness site moves that project closer to the formal planning approval stage that precedes construction commencement.