Hurricane Melissa
Kingston, Jamaica, 30 June 2026 — A wave of public anger over property insurance is building across Jamaica, and a…
Kingston, Jamaica, 30 June 2026A registered land title is, on paper, just a document. In practice, it is the difference…
Kingston, Jamaica, 30 June 2026Today marks the final deadline for National Housing Trust mortgagors still recovering from Hurricane Melissa to…
Eight months after Melissa, three stories define Jamaica’s housing recovery: Parottee fishermen refusing relocation without consultation, the Bureau of Standards demanding evidence from modular home suppliers, and 1,500 tourism workers receiving housing grants. Together they map the gap between recovery as announced and recovery as experienced.
Kingston, Jamaica, 28 June 2026 A tenfold increase in applications for modular building system assessments has landed on the desk…
Kingston, Jamaica, 22 June 2026The 2026 Atlantic hurricane season has opened with its most favourable forecast in more than a…
Informal housing was 18 times more likely to suffer severe damage from Melissa than formal housing. With 600,000 Jamaicans in weak tenure situations and a pre-existing housing deficit of 200,000 units, the physical rebuild alone will not resolve the structural conditions that made the catastrophe so devastating.
As Jamaica enters another hurricane season with thousands still under damaged roofs, NaRRA’s heritage protection clause raises the question of what the rebuilt country will look like. The Singapore comparison, the bungalow question and the 1.8% donations figure all point to the same challenge: Jamaica must build something worthy of what the storm cost.
Kingston, Jamaica, 30 June 2026Building permit applications across Jamaica’s municipal corporations have surged in the months since Hurricane Melissa, with…
Three hundred more container homes are arriving as the NHT hands over 27 formal service lots in Malvern, St Elizabeth. The dual deployment, temporary modular units and permanent titled land, illustrates the two tracks of Jamaica’s post-Melissa housing recovery, and raises the question of how and when they converge into lasting housing security for displaced families.
Publication date: 5 June 2026 | Covering: May 2026 Monthly Briefing Bank of Jamaica maintains policy rate at 5.50 per…
A Westmoreland hospitality business that has held its property insurance for over 30 years is still waiting for its Melissa claim to be resolved seven months after the storm. The case has become a catalyst for calls on the FSC and parliament to impose minimum standards on insurance claim processing in Jamaica.
With 98% of Melissa relief donations unspent after four months, Jamaica’s recovery raises harder questions than accounting ones: why does the country struggle to rapidly mobilise its own expertise in crises, how can the diaspora be better integrated, and why does communication with affected communities fall so far short of what people need?
The auditor general has found that 98.2 per cent of the $1.44 billion in Hurricane Melissa donations remained unspent four months after the storm. Government and opposition offer sharply different explanations. For families still under damaged roofs, the debate is not academic.
At the groundbreaking for a new 800-home St Thomas development, the prime minister made it explicit: every new home built in Jamaica must now be designed for Category 5 conditions. The instruction, delivered to a private developer working with the NHT’s Guaranteed Purchase Programme, signals a shift in the building standard frame for all future housing in Jamaica.