Flanker, St James, 27 July 2026
A single father who lost his one-room board house to Hurricane Melissa has moved into a new concrete home in Flanker, St James, the first of ten houses being built in the parish by a US-based literacy charity.
Theodore Notise, a construction worker who also takes on part-time cleaning jobs, now lives with his twin sons, Tejanny and Tejunny, in a one-bedroom concrete studio. He described losing the old house in last October’s Category 5 storm as devastating, and said his first thought at the time was keeping the boys safe rather than saving belongings.
“I do feel much safer now in this concrete home,” he said.
From Literacy to Housing
The home was provided by the GrassROOTS Community Foundation, led by Jamaica-born sociologist Dr Janice Johnson-Dias. The foundation had been running literacy work in Flanker as part of a five-year investment in St James when the hurricane struck and interrupted its programmes.
Johnson-Dias said the charity concluded it could not expect families to focus on reading and learning while they had nowhere secure to live, so rebuilding homes became part of its mission.
Families are chosen on the basis of vulnerability and the difference a house could make. Notise was selected first because he is raising two young children alone. The foundation said it is deliberately prioritising households with several children, particularly boys, who can be exposed to social problems when their home life is unstable.
Cost and Timeline
Each house costs about US$50,000 to build, covering construction, labour and finishing. The foundation expects seven of the ten homes to be finished before October, the first anniversary of Hurricane Melissa. The remaining three are planned for the Cuba area, where difficult terrain is expected to push costs higher.
Funding has come from donors in the United States, the Idris Elba Foundation and the Black Lives Matter Foundation. Opposition Senator Allan Bernard and representatives of the Flanker Resource Centre joined foundation officials at the handover.
What It Means for Recovery
Nine months after the storm, rebuilding in St James is far from finished. Projects like this show how charities and overseas donors are helping to fill part of the gap alongside state programmes.
The choice of concrete construction is also telling. Notise’s board house did not survive Melissa, and families rebuilding with help from any source will be looking for homes that can withstand the next major storm.
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