HAJ Targets 10,000 Housing Solutions in Four Years With Edmund Ridge and 2,134-Start 2026/27 Programme

Kingston, Jamaica — 27 March 2024

The Housing Agency of Jamaica has committed to delivering 10,000 housing solutions over a four-year period ending in the late 2020s, operating alongside the National Housing Trust as a complementary vehicle for the government’s housing programme. For the 2025-26 fiscal year, the HAJ plans to commence construction on 795 units and deliver 563 solutions to the market, while also handing over 208 land titles to improve access to homeownership for lower-income groups and informal settlers. The 2026-27 ambition is more substantial: 2,134 housing starts across four parishes, with St. James receiving the largest allocation of 1,542 units, St. Catherine 310 units, Trelawny 210 units, and St. Andrew 72 units.

The HAJ serves a slightly different market segment from the NHT. While the NHT operates primarily as a mortgage lender with a significant direct development programme, the HAJ focuses on developing and delivering housing solutions — particularly for lower-income households who may not qualify for NHT loan products at standard terms. The HAJ’s strategic vision includes improving the affordability of housing units, upgrading infrastructure in marginalised communities, and increasing the issuance of land titles — a mandate that places it at the intersection of housing delivery, community development, and land tenure formalisation.

Edmund Ridge: A Model for Mixed-Income Housing

The Edmund Ridge project stands as the HAJ’s flagship demonstration of what its housing model can deliver. With 739 units in various phases of planning and construction, Edmund Ridge is designed to house a deliberately mixed population: tourism workers, taxi operators, craft market vendors, and other persons whose income profiles do not neatly fit the formal employment categories that the NHT’s contribution-based system serves best. The project reflects an understanding that Jamaica’s housing need is not limited to formal sector employees, and that the gig workers, self-employed operators, and informal sector participants who constitute a significant portion of the Jamaican workforce also need and deserve access to affordable formal housing.

The inclusion of tourism workers in Edmund Ridge’s target population is consistent with the broader policy recognition — visible also in the Negril tourism worker scheme and the Montego Bay worker housing initiatives — that Jamaica’s most economically productive sector is built on a workforce that cannot afford to live near its workplaces. Craft market vendors and taxi operators represent Jamaica’s enormous self-employed sector, whose members pay NHT contributions voluntarily at lower and less predictable rates than formal sector employees but who have legitimate housing need that the government’s programmes should address.

St. James as the Dominant HAJ Focus

The 2026-27 allocation of 1,542 HAJ housing starts in St. James — out of a total of 2,134 across all parishes — reflects both the scale of housing need in Montego Bay and the HAJ’s assessment that St. James can absorb new supply at the rate required. Montego Bay is Jamaica’s second largest city, the centre of the island’s most concentrated tourism economy, and a parish whose rapid economic growth has generated housing demand that the formal sector has consistently failed to satisfy. The HAJ’s commitment of 1,542 starts in St. James in a single fiscal year would represent a step-change in the parish’s formal housing delivery if fully executed.

“The HAJ’s 10,000-solution target over four years is serious and necessary,” said Dean Jones, Managing Director of Jamaica Homes. “The NHT and HAJ working together are the institutional backbone of Jamaica’s affordable housing delivery, and for that combination to work at the scale Jamaica needs, both agencies must operate at their stated targets. The Edmund Ridge model — designed explicitly for tourism workers and self-employed Jamaicans — is the right policy direction. Jamaica’s informal and semi-formal economy is large and its workforce deserves housing solutions designed for their income realities, not just for formal sector contributors.”

Title Issuance as a Housing Policy Tool

The HAJ’s target of 208 land title handovers in 2025-26 reflects the critical role that formal title plays in Jamaica’s housing ecosystem. A family that occupies its land informally — without a registered certificate of title — cannot access NHT or commercial mortgage financing to improve or purchase a home on that land. The title handover programme converts informal occupancy into formal ownership, unlocking the mortgage financing system for households that were previously excluded from it. Each of the 208 title handovers in 2025-26 is not merely a bureaucratic event — it is a family’s admission ticket to Jamaica’s formal housing and financial system.