Is Jamaica on Course to Meet Its Housing Targets? What We Know

The difference between those two accounts, a target met and a target with most of its homes still to be built, depends almost entirely on what is being counted. That is why the figures below focus on homes started and homes finished.

How many homes have actually been built?

The most complete recent figures were given by the Prime Minister during this year’s Sectoral Debate. Between 2016 and the end of 2025, the NHT recorded 31,540 housing starts and 21,166 completions, and issued 67,249 mortgages. He said the Trust’s total spending on mortgages, starts and completions over the period came to about $343 billion.

Government ministers point out that this is a considerable improvement on what went before. State Minister Abka Fitz-Henley told the Senate in June that annual NHT housing starts were 57 per cent higher under the current administration than under its predecessor. That comparison is a fair measure of momentum. It is not a measure of whether the deficit is shrinking.

The gap between starts and completions is not, in itself, evidence of failure. Housing schemes take years to finish, and some of the homes started in 2024 and 2025 will be handed over in 2026 and 2027. But it does mean that announcements of new starts tell families relatively little about when they will receive keys.

Is the pace fast enough?

The NHT’s annual reports show how uneven delivery has been from year to year. The Trust completed about 2,667 homes in 2021/22, then 1,546 in 2022/23. In 2023/24 it set a target of 4,141 completions and finished 2,582. For 2024/25 the Prime Minister projected around 3,744 completions, and for the current 2026/27 financial year the plan is 5,673.

Even the most ambitious of those plans is a long way from the scale of need. If the deficit really is around 150,000 units, closing it within ten years would require about 15,000 new homes a year from all sources, public and private, before allowing for population growth or the homes lost to Melissa.

Why is it so difficult?

The Government’s own explanation is that the problem lies on the supply side. Speaking at the handover of the NHT’s Vineyard Town development in July, the Prime Minister argued that Jamaica’s housing challenge is not a lack of demand but the scale of output. He has repeatedly identified the same bottlenecks: too few contractors able to deliver large schemes, shortages of skilled labour, and the time it takes to secure planning and construction approvals.

Those constraints are familiar to anyone who has tried to build in Jamaica. Land that appears cheap can become expensive once roads, drainage, water and electricity are added, and after Melissa the same builders, materials and tradespeople are being sought for both new schemes and storm repairs across the western parishes.

There is also the question of money. This year the Government again sought to extend transfers from the NHT for budgetary support, including $11.4 billion. Ministers say the withdrawals have not reduced housing spending, pointing to the Trust’s large outlays on mortgages and construction. Critics argue that money paid in by contributors should be used only for housing. The Prime Minister himself told the House that using NHT funds for anything other than housing would be a matter of grave concern, even as he defended the extension as a reluctant step.

To widen the pool of builders, the Government is urging smaller private developers to take on projects of between five and 25 units, with financing and technical support from the NHT’s Small Developers Programme.

How has Hurricane Melissa changed the picture?

Melissa made landfall in south-western Jamaica on 28 October 2025 as a Category 5 storm, the strongest ever to strike the island directly. Within days, officials reported that roofs had been ripped from about 120,000 structures, affecting some 90,000 families, most of them in the west. In Black River, the Prime Minister said up to 90 per cent of roofs had been destroyed.

Not every damaged structure was a home, and many have since been repaired. But the storm added an urgent rebuilding programme on top of a shortage that already existed. The NHT has procured 2,500 semi-permanent modular units, two-bedroom homes of about 400 square feet, at a cost of US$19 million, and plans to buy 5,000 in total under the Shelter Recovery Programme. Soldiers from the Jamaica Defence Force and international teams, including from Guyana, have been carrying out repairs, and Guyana has pledged more than 300 new homes.

What happens next?

For the 2026/27 financial year, the NHT is scheduled to begin 10,675 homes and complete 5,673. If it hits the completions figure, it will be the Trust’s most productive year in the period covered by its recent annual reports, more than double its 2023/24 output. Its record of meeting annual targets suggests caution: in 2023/24, it delivered about 62 per cent of the completions it had planned.

Beyond the NHT, much depends on whether private developers, the HAJ and large master-planned projects such as Bernard Lodge can move from approval to occupation quickly enough, and at prices working Jamaicans can afford. Faster planning approvals, a deeper pool of contractors and steady access to finance will matter more than any new headline number.

The Prime Minister has said Jamaica will recover, and that recovery has begun. The true test of the housing programme will not be how many solutions are announced, but how many families are living in finished, resilient homes when the next storm season arrives.

A note on the numbers

Housing “solutions” include completed homes, serviced lots, mortgages and other forms of assistance, so totals for solutions are not directly comparable with homes built. NHT figures are by financial year (April to March) unless stated. The NHT’s 2024/25 actual completions had not been published at the time of writing; the figure shown is the plan announced in the 2024/25 Budget Debate. The 150,000 deficit is a government estimate.