One year ago today, Hurricane Melissa came ashore in south-western Jamaica as a Category 5 storm, the strongest on record to strike the island. It killed at least 45 people, tore the roofs off well over 100,000 homes and left damage the government now puts at nearly 57% of the country’s annual economic output.
Twelve months on, the debris is mostly gone from the main roads. The hotels in Montego Bay are open. But drive into the hills of Westmoreland or the flats of St Elizabeth and the colour of recovery is still blue: the blue of tarpaulins stretched over rafters, weighted down with stones, waiting for a roof that has not come.
The government has spent heavily. It has paid out roughly J$12 billion in home-repair grants and bought 2,500 modular houses from China. Yet Prime Minister Andrew Holness has said he is “not satisfied” with the pace, acknowledging that some families are still sleeping outside. This is an accounting of what was promised, what has been delivered, and why the gap between the two has been so hard to close.
Sources: Office of the Prime Minister briefing, 27 Oct 2026; National Housing Trust; Public Accounts Committee, Jul 2026.
The Scale of the Wreckage
Melissa did not knock down a few neighbourhoods. It flattened a region. Within a week, the Prime Minister told Parliament that satellite and drone data showed more than 116,000 buildings severely damaged. By mid-November, the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM) counted 156,000 damaged dwellings and 24,000 total losses across St Elizabeth, Westmoreland, Manchester, St James, Trelawny and Hanover.
The Ministry of Labour and Social Security then sent assessors door to door. By April 2026 they had completed 113,565 household assessments. Nearly 18,000 homes were classified as severely damaged and more than 42,000 as having major damage.
Source: Ministry of Labour and Social Security via JIS, 16 April 2026.
The money tells the same story. A damage and loss assessment led by UN ECLAC and the Planning Institute of Jamaica put the storm’s total cost at J$1.95 trillion (US$12.2 billion), or 56.7% of GDP — more than four times Hurricane Gilbert. The social sector, which includes housing, accounted for J$726 billion in damage alone. An Inter-American Development Bank summary found that housing carried the largest additional costs of any social sector.
Why so much destruction? Part of the answer is what Jamaicans build with. Nationally, about a quarter of homes were mainly wood; in Hanover, about 60%, according to census figures. In Westmoreland, roughly two-thirds of homes were wood or mixed wood and concrete. Those were the houses that disappeared.
Two Programmes, Two Speeds
The government’s housing response has run on two tracks. One, ROOFS, hands families cash and building materials to repair their own homes. The other provides modular or ‘semi-permanent’ houses to families whose homes were destroyed outright or stood on land too dangerous to rebuild. One has moved slowly. The other has barely moved at all.
ROOFS: halfway there
The Restoration of Owner or Occupant Family Shelters programme pays J$75,000 for minor damage, up to J$200,000 for major damage and up to J$500,000 for severe damage, with most of the larger grants restricted to building materials collected from participating hardware stores. Beneficiaries receive a text message with a QR code telling them where to pick up their zinc and lumber.
Payments started slowly — about J$115 million by early February — then picked up. By this week, roughly J$12 billion had been spent. But on Tuesday, the eve of the anniversary, Mr Holness acknowledged that only about half of the 118,000 assessed households had been paid. He allocated another J$9.65 billion and set a target of reaching 90% by the end of December and the rest by January 2027.
Sources: Ministry of Labour and Social Security (Feb, Mar); JIS (Aug); Office of the Prime Minister (Oct). Figures as reported; ‘about’ and ‘close to’ values rounded.
The shape of that curve matters. Close to J$11 billion had gone out by late August; in the two months since, only about J$1 billion more. In the meantime, the people at the back of the queue are the ones with the worst problems. In July, the mayor of Savanna-la-Mar estimated that up to 40% of houses in eastern Westmoreland still had no roof. In September, the area’s MP, Dayton Campbell, put the share of damaged homes still under tarpaulins at 40 to 50%.
Modular homes: bought, shipped, waiting
For the families with nothing left to repair, the government promised houses. About six weeks after the storm it committed to buying modular units. The National Housing Trust eventually signed an emergency contract worth J$3.1 billion with Jiangsu Zhenhuai Construction Group for 2,500 foldable units; a minister later told the Senate the total cost was J$4.6 billion. China donated additional units, and the Red Cross committed 300 wooden houses.
The units arrived. By May, about 924 sat in storage yards in Spanish Town, Luana and Montpelier under Jamaica Defence Force guard. By August, 1,500 were on the island. Putting them on the ground has proved far harder. Each needs a site, a certified concrete base, water, sewage and power. In July, the permanent secretary in the Office of the Prime Minister, Rocky Meade, told Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee he could not say how many had been handed to victims.
Construction contracts for the first 268 ‘Shelter Recovery Programme’ homes in Westmoreland and St Elizabeth were signed only on 3 September, worth J$1.05 billion and due for completion within 12 months. Work on foundations in Bunkers Hill, Trelawny, began in October. “I, as a minister, am not pleased with the progress of this project,” Robert Montague, the minister responsible for settlements, said on a site visit last week. At Shrewsbury in Westmoreland, 20 homes have been erected out of about 50 planned. No move-in date has been announced.
Sources: ODPEM; MLSS via JIS; ODPEM (May); National Housing Trust (Aug); Ministry of Economic Growth and Infrastructure Development (Sep); Jamaica Homes News (Oct).
The most striking number in that chart is not the last one. It is the drop from about 12,000 families initially judged severely affected to about 2,500 now deemed eligible for a modular home. Officials say the list was cleaned of duplicate claims and people who could repair with ROOFS grants, and that units will not be placed in unsafe areas. Those may be sound reasons. But no public breakdown explains where the other 9,500 families went, or how many of the roughly 24,000 households whose homes were total losses are now rebuilding on their own.
Where the Shelter Population Went
At the peak, more than 25,000 people slept in public shelters. Within a week that fell to about 2,500. By December, 1,061 people remained in 101 shelters, nearly half of them in Westmoreland. Nine months after the storm, at least 60 people were still living in eight shelters in Westmoreland alone, some in schools.
Sources: Ministry of Local Government (Nov 2025); ODPEM (Dec 2025); Mayor of Savanna-la-Mar (Jul 2026).
Emptier shelters do not mean housed families. Many of the displaced moved in with relatives, rented elsewhere or returned to damaged houses. Within weeks of the storm, Opposition MP Damion Crawford proposed a formal register for host families, an approach used in Britain’s Homes for Ukraine scheme. None was created. Once people left the shelters, they largely dropped out of the official count.
The Faces Behind the Numbers
In Barrett Town, St James, Sonia Dihnam, who uses a wheelchair after a stroke, was still sleeping under a tarp six months after the storm, the medical charity Project HOPE reported in April. In Waterworks, Westmoreland, 74-year-old Glenville Forrest, who cannot walk, received a studio container home in July — nine months after his wooden house was destroyed. His daughter, who also lost her home, gave thanks to God at the handover.
In Parottee, on the St Elizabeth coast, Windell Daley told reporters this week that he has received no help while neighbours were paid. The government wants to move the low-lying fishing village about 10 kilometres inland to Luana. Many residents are rebuilding on the shoreline anyway. And the United Church’s Rev Norbert Stephens has said some families have been shut out of help because the land under their house is still registered to relatives who died generations ago.
Why It Is Taking So Long
Officials, opposition MPs and aid workers broadly agree on the main obstacles. They disagree on how much of the delay was avoidable.
| Obstacle | What the record shows |
|---|---|
| Land titles | About 45% of Jamaica’s 900,000 land parcels have no title. In Savanna-la-Mar, 86% of household heads owned their homes but only 23.9% owned the land. The government will not build on land a beneficiary cannot show a right to use. |
| Procurement and permits | Mr Holness: “between the logistics, the contracting, the permitting, procurement, it is as if no one cares that it’s an emergency.” |
| Unsafe sites | ODPEM says modular units will not go in highly vulnerable locations, which means finding new land and, in some cases, relocating whole communities. |
| Verification | Beneficiary lists were rebuilt to remove duplicates and those deemed not in need, cutting the eligible pool from about 12,000 to about 2,500 families. |
| Idle donations | By February, ODPEM had spent J$26.2 million of J$1.44 billion in donations — 1.8%. The Auditor General could not verify 421 reported roof repairs. |
| Weather and contractors | Mr Montague cited afternoon rain and contractor difficulties for slow work in Trelawny. |
Sources: Ministry of Economic Growth and Infrastructure Development; Office of the Prime Minister; ODPEM; Auditor General’s Department; Public Accounts Committee.
The Auditor General’s May report was particularly damaging. It found that only 1.8% of cash donations to ODPEM had been spent by late February, that 27.8% of roofing supplies lacked proper delivery records, and that three of four roofing contracts went to suppliers without valid registration or tax compliance certificates. The government has since redirected unspent donations into foundations and utilities for modular homes; total donations have reached about J$1.7 billion.
Where the Money Came From — and Where It Went
Jamaica entered the storm better insured than most small states. Its World Bank catastrophe bond paid out in full — US$150 million — and the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility paid a record US$91.9 million. Government spending on the wider response and recovery has reached about J$84 billion.
| Housing support | Amount | Status |
|---|---|---|
| ROOFS repair grants (MLSS) | J$10bn + J$9.65bn allocated | ~J$12bn paid to ~half of 118,000 households (Oct 2026) |
| NHT disaster relief grants | J$2.2bn paid | ~5,100 of ~8,300 applications processed (Jun 2026) |
| Modular homes (NHT) | J$3.1bn supply contract; J$4.6bn total cost cited | 2,500 units bought; no published occupancy count (Aug 2026) |
| Shelter Recovery Programme, Phase 1 | J$1.05bn | 268 homes contracted in Sept; due within 12 months (Sep 2026) |
| Semi-permanent housing top-up | J$800m | Includes J$100m for Shrewsbury site (Oct 2026) |
| ODPEM/JDF roof repairs | J$750m from donations | 575 roofs installed (Oct 2026) |
| NHT mortgage moratorium | 36,000 mortgages | Six-month payment pause (Jun 2026) |
Sources: Office of the Prime Minister; Ministry of Labour and Social Security; National Housing Trust; Ministry of Economic Growth and Infrastructure Development. Amounts in Jamaican dollars.
Private insurance has helped those who had it. Insurers had paid $10.37 billion on residential claims by the end of September, according to the Insurance Association of Jamaica, which has also indicated that about 95% of residential properties are underinsured. Coverage among owners of wooden homes on family or leased land in the worst-hit areas is likely to be far lower still.
What It Means for Jamaica’s Housing Market
For a property publication, the slow rebuild is not only a humanitarian story. It is reshaping the housing market in the west in at least four ways.
1. A permanent loss of affordable stock
Many of the homes Melissa destroyed were among the cheapest in the country: owner-built wooden houses on family or leased land. A J$500,000 ROOFS grant can patch a roof; it cannot rebuild a house. Families that cannot rebuild become renters, lodgers or emigrants, adding pressure to rental markets in Savanna-la-Mar, Black River and Montego Bay.
2. Land title is now a recovery asset
Melissa has turned the land title from paperwork into the key to aid. Families with clear titles have generally moved faster through verification; many without them have waited, though officials say exceptions are made and government land is being offered. Expect demand for titling services — and disputes over family land — to rise. The government’s land titling push now has a disaster-recovery rationale. Our earlier analysis of mortgages and insurance after Melissa shows titled owners face their own risks too.
3. Relocation will create new communities
Policies against rebuilding in vulnerable areas mean new settlements: Luana for Parottee, Shrewsbury in Westmoreland, government-controlled lands made available by the National Land Agency. Those sites will need roads, water, schools and jobs. Done well, they could become the nucleus of safer towns. Done poorly, they risk becoming the informal settlements of the next decade.
4. Building costs and skills
Tens of thousands of families buying zinc, lumber and cement at the same time, through the same hardware stores, has kept pressure on materials and skilled labour. Construction costs are not trending down, and the rebuild is competing with private development for the same masons and carpenters.
A Year On: The Unanswered Questions
Sources: government statements, parliamentary records and official reports cited above.
The Jamaica Reconstruction and Resilience Oversight Committee, chaired by the economist Peter Blair Henry, has promised quarterly public updates and access to project data. Its first report should answer what the past year has not: how many families have a roof, how many have a home, how many are still waiting, and when each of them can expect help.
Until then, the most honest measure of Jamaica’s recovery may be the one Dayton Campbell proposed in Parliament in September: that every approved family should know when work will begin. A year after Melissa, many still do not.
Jamaica Homes News is independent. Figures are drawn from government statements, parliamentary records and official reports; where agencies use different measures or dates, we have said so. This article is not financial or investment advice.
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