Does the NHT still serve its purpose?

Kingston, Jamaica, 23 January 2025

A persistent criticism of the National Housing Trust is that it does not build enough houses. But that charge rests on a popular assumption about the Trust’s purpose that does not match the law establishing it. When the agency was created in the 1970s, it was conceived primarily as a financial institution for the housing sector, meant to supplement public and private lenders rather than replace them. Understanding that distinction reframes the entire debate about whether the Trust still serves a purpose.

What the Trust was designed to do

The legislation directs the Trust to improve the supply of housing by promoting approved projects, making loans available to contributors to buy, build, repair or improve homes, and encouraging better methods of producing houses. Nowhere is it mandated simply to construct dwellings at scale. From the outset it was framed as a financier, mobilising compulsory contributions to extend access to housing loans, not as a national house-builder.

By that measure, the Trust has largely done its job. It is the largest provider of mortgages in the country, and on the test of whether Jamaicans can access its financial solutions, it performs. The widespread belief that it has failed stems partly from judging it against a mandate it was never given.

The real limitation

And yet the criticism is not baseless, because the Trust’s mortgages are tied to income. A low-income contributor may qualify for a loan, but the amount they can access is often too small to buy a home in a market where prices have climbed steeply. So the difficulty is not that the Trust fails its mission, but that its mission, as designed, cannot on its own solve an affordability crisis driven by a shortage of homes at prices ordinary people can pay.

This is the crux. A financing institution can widen access to credit, but it cannot conjure affordable supply where the market does not produce it. Comparisons to housing agencies in other countries that build and redevelop at scale tend to ignore that those bodies were given a far broader mandate, and far broader powers, than the Trust ever held.

The question worth asking

So the honest question is not whether the Trust has failed, but whether the mandate it was given in the 1970s still fits the Jamaica of today. A financing model made sense in an era of stratospheric interest rates, when subsidised mortgages were the binding constraint. In a market now defined by a shortage of affordable homes, the more pressing need may be supply, which a pure financier is not equipped to deliver alone.

Dean Jones, founder of Jamaica Homes, said much of the public frustration with the Trust comes from expecting it to do something it was never built to do. The serious conversation, he noted, is whether its founding purpose should now be widened rather than whether it has lived up to one it never had.

That is the debate Jamaica should be having. Judged against its original design, the Trust serves its purpose. Judged against the country’s current need, the question is whether that purpose is still the right one, and whether the institution should evolve to meet a crisis its founders did not foresee.

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