File
Inner-city housing on Little King Street in Denham Town, Kingston.
Daraine Luton and Gareth Manning, Sunday Gleaner Reporter
THERE ARE no zinc fences, no corners where men gather and smoke ganja, cigarettes and drink beer, no dilapidated houses or roadside dining rooms.
Children run around freely, cars are parked in some lots and many adults could be seen looking through their windows when The Sunday Gleaner arrived. The buildings still look sparkling new. This is a glimpse of two housing schemes built under the Inner-City Housing Programme (ICHP).
This is a special project of the National Housing Trust (NHT) and the brainchild of the previous People's National Party (PNP) administration.
NHT burden
The goal of the ICHP is to improve living conditions in selected communities. These are communities where unemployment is high, educational levels are low and people live in substandard conditions, including severe overcrowding, a lack of piped water and poor toilet facilities. However, according to Prime Minister Bruce Golding, the ICHP has become a burden on the NHT as 69 per cent of mortgagors are in arrears.
Golding said that while housing must be built in the inner city, the NHT should not absorb the loss to build these houses. The ICHP will cost $15.5 billion when completed, up from $5 billion. The NHT may not recover funds spent on the project, according to the prime minister, because people living in the houses cannot pay for them.
According to Golding, Denham Town, which is in his West Kingston constituency, owes $1.6 million. Persons living in Trench Town owe $2.6 million, Spanish Town Road $1.4 million, and Monaltry, $89,000.
"Some of the arrears are more than 90 days, some of it 30 days, some of it less than 30 days," Golding said. The average mortgage payment for persons benefiting under the ICHP is $5,000.
Arrears
He added that $3.4 million is to be collected each month from persons benefiting from the inner-city housing project. Arrears to the NHT for ICHP housing stands at $6.1 million.
The residents are cognisant of the perception that many of them are just free-riders - refusing to pay utility bills and mortgages. Residents say it is not that they don't want to pay, but rather, that it is sometimes difficult to come up with the funds.
In the well-maintained complex of inner-city houses built by the NHT in Arnett Gardens, a pregnant 35-year-old Christine Samuels washes dishes in preparation for dinner for herself and four young children.
A self-employed single mother, Samuels juggles odd jobs to pay the bills, but has refrained from working, due to her pregnancy, since January. As a result, she is three months in arrears on her NHT mortgage for her two-bedroom unit. She owes the housing trust $19,500. But she has already gone in to make preparations to pay them little more than half by the month's end.
'It nuh easy'
"With the water and the light and the high food prices, it nuh easy fi pay them," says Samuels, who lives in the PNP stronghold represented by former finance minister Dr Omar Davies.
Across the political divide, in the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP)-strong Denham Town, which Golding represents, 45-year-old Presley Campbell tells a similar story.
He is just now managing to pay off his $55,000 arrears on his mortgage with only two months' payment outstanding. His mortgage payment is set at $3,700 monthly.
"A not dat me no waa pay, yuh know, king, but me have no work."
Campbell occupies a two-bed-room unit with his common-law wife and three children. His wife is also unemployed and while she is actively seeking employment, nothing has come her way yet.
Campbell was employed before he started sinking into arrears, working at the University Hospital of the West Indies as a porter. But he gave up the job because it became difficult to get transport back home when violence erupted in the community. Since then, it has been difficult to get a job, and with other basic bills to pay, it has been difficult paying the mortgage.
The prime minister must know inna him mind that if the people dem did have a job, dem would pay. People dem would a like a work but dem can't get none because of which part dem live," he opines.
But despite the obvious income-flow problems, Campbell believes people in the complex could have avoided the monthly pressure if they had communicated to the NHT that the rates were too high.
"You see, first time, the people dem usually come here every Sunday come talk to we and nobody nuh say to dem say dem couldn't manage the $4,000 a month or so, so the people dem just go weh," he says.
But he says the Government also should have recognised that people would not necessarily be prepared to pay.
Mortgage struggle
"You haffi recognise say people was living here free before. So it a go hard fi dem pay all rent, and dem thing there," he says.
Delroy Dwyer, who occupies one of the apartments in Arnett Gardens, says it is a joy to benefit from a house under the ICHP. "Paying the mortgage is a struggle though, but although it rough, yu still affi find it. A nuh every month yuh can find di mortgage money," he relates.
He says that many persons are either self-employed or unemployed and are not guaranteed a salary to meet monthly expenses.
Likewise, it is the matter of employment which rests most on the mind of Beverly Haase, who lives in one of the Denham Town houses. She blames the past PNP government for persons' inability to pay the mortgage.
"Within the 18 years of the last government, there was no work. Everywhere lock down, there are no jobs and so it is difficult to survive," Haase tells The Sunday Gleaner.
Bad idea?
Asked if it was a bad idea for Government to have built the houses for people who could not afford them, Haase said no.
"It is good for people who don't have anything. People lived in bruk-down houses or outside, so it was good to build the houses, but yuh need fi do more for poor people.
"What we need is some jobs and everything is OK. There is no work, so we cannot meet our expenses. Right now it is overpowering. Work is hard to get and because of the higher cost of living, it has got stiffer. We have put in this government and we are giving them the chance to help us, because we suffered for 18 years under the PNP government. They did nothing for us," the Denham Town resident says.
