To build the homes, first build the builders

Kingston, Jamaica, 25 July 2025

The National Housing Trust is expanding its Construction Scholarship fivefold, from ten awards to fifty, in a move that ties the country’s housing ambitions to the skills needed to build them. Marking the Trust’s fiftieth anniversary, the programme will fund students pursuing degrees in civil engineering, construction management, architecture, urban planning and related fields, offering up to $1 million each. It is an investment less in homes than in the people who will design and deliver them, and that distinction matters.

Building the builders

Jamaica’s housing deficit is usually framed as a problem of money and land. Less often discussed is the question of capacity, whether the country has enough trained engineers, planners and construction managers to deliver tens of thousands of units to standard and at pace. A pipeline of skilled professionals is as much a precondition for housing delivery as finance or available land.

By funding fifty students across two academic years, the Trust is investing in that capacity directly. Priority is given to applicants who demonstrate financial need, a commitment to completing their training, and an intention to contribute to Jamaica’s housing and infrastructure development. The scholarship is, in effect, an attempt to grow the workforce that the Trust’s own construction targets will require.

Why skills shape the market

The link between professional training and the property market is indirect but real. A shortage of qualified construction and design professionals raises costs, slows delivery and, in a climate-exposed country, can compromise the resilience of what gets built. Conversely, a deeper pool of local talent strengthens the quality and durability of the housing stock and reduces dependence on imported expertise.

There is also a question of who builds Jamaica’s future communities. Investing in local engineers, architects and planners helps ensure that the people shaping the island’s towns and neighbourhoods understand its conditions, its climate and its culture. That local knowledge is difficult to substitute and valuable to retain.

A long-term view

Scholarships do not deliver homes this year or next. Their payoff arrives over a decade, as funded students qualify and enter a sector straining to meet national demand. That patience is the point. A housing strategy measured only in units completed risks neglecting the human infrastructure that makes sustained delivery possible.

Dean Jones, founder of Jamaica Homes, said a country that wants to build at scale must first build the people who will do the work. Investing in the next generation of professionals, he noted, is among the least visible and most durable things a housing institution can do.

As Jamaica sets ambitious targets for the years ahead, the quiet expansion of a scholarship may prove as consequential as any groundbreaking. The homes the country needs will be designed and built by hands that must first be trained, and that training, begun now, is an investment in the housing of a generation still to come.

Follow Jamaica Homes on Youtube @jamaicahomes and Instagram @jamaica_homes and on Facebook @jamaicahomes Send us a message or email us at onlinefeedback@jamaica-homes.com or editor@jamaica-homes.com