Nearly 21 years after it first broke ground in 2004, a National Housing Trust (NHT) residential development project in Jamaica marked a major milestone Wednesday, with 34 fully serviced lots formally handed over to beneficiaries at the Cherry Gardens Housing Development in Kitson Town, St Catherine. Speaking as the keynote speaker at the handover ceremony, Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness framed the multi-decade delay not just as an infrastructure planning issue, but as a stark illustration of deep-rooted productivity challenges holding back national development.
Holness explained that while missing sewage infrastructure and other unaddressed supporting utilities directly extended the project timeline, the delay exposed a broader systemic cultural problem: even with strong initial planning, public project implementation in Jamaica remains glacial. He noted that Jamaicans often hold a unique cultural perspective that conflates length of process with quality of work, a mindset that has embedded itself in how the country manages public affairs.
“When we compare our actual achievements against our full national potential, we have to admit that while we have accomplished much, we could have achieved far more,” Holness told attendees. “There is a long-held view in our bureaucracy that if a project does not take years to complete, it cannot have been done properly.”
The prime minister argued that Jamaica’s bureaucratic culture has for generations prioritized rigid adherence to process over delivery of tangible results, a legacy of the colonial era that continues to slow the rollout of critical public assets including housing. “We were left with a bureaucratic mindset that hides behind regulations and procedural checks, because we have been taught not to trust our own judgment,” he explained. “Currently, our system only frames a lack of process as corruption; the failure to deliver outcomes that citizens need is not held up as a failure at all. That has to change. We need to reframe success around what is actually delivered to the Jamaican people, not just how many boxes are checked.”
Holness emphasized that boosting productivity across both the public and private sectors is non-negotiable if Jamaica wants to speed up development of all types, including much-needed residential projects. His critical remarks came alongside praise for the NHT and its private partner Preview Limited for finally delivering this phase of the Cherry Gardens development, which forms one segment of a larger 193-lot master project supported by the NHT’s interim financing programme. To date, the NHT has retained 80 lots for public beneficiaries, 47 of which were already handed over prior to Wednesday’s ceremony, with the 34 lots transferred this week marking the completion of that segment.
Under the NHT’s financing model, the agency provides up to 100% concessionary-rate financing to private developers, on the condition that developers pass those savings on to low- and middle-income home buyers via reduced lot and home prices. Holness acknowledged that the NHT has made major strides in expanding access to housing finance, including offering mortgage rates between 0% and 2% for a large share of low-income borrowers. However, he warned that Jamaica’s housing crisis has shifted: the primary challenge is no longer lack of access to financing, but a chronic shortage of housing supply to meet growing consumer demand.
Holness explained that ongoing government and NHT efforts to expand financing access without a matching increase in available housing units have inadvertently driven up residential prices across the market. “We keep increasing the amount borrowers can access to buy homes, and we create special preferences for public servants and young buyers to help them get a foot on the property ladder,” he noted. “But what we’ve found is that the more we expand access to financing, the more prices climb. That’s purely a matter of supply and demand: there simply are not enough homes being built to meet the demand we’ve created.”
To address this systemic mismatch, Holness announced that the NHT and national government are rolling out a new comprehensive master planning framework designed to unlock unused developable land and speed up housing delivery across the country. The centerpiece of this new approach is the Greater Innswood strategic plan, led by the NHT, which will coordinate integrated development across existing and new communities in St Catherine by resolving long-standing infrastructure gaps that have stalled residential projects for decades.
Holness said the plan will directly target the core constraints that have historically delayed or blocked development approvals: inadequate road networks, poor drainage systems, unreliable water access, and missing sewage infrastructure. Once fully implemented, the master plan is projected to unlock thousands of new housing units across the Greater Innswood area, with multiple pre-identified projects already lined up that will deliver more than 3,000 new residential units in the near term.
Closing his address, Holness stressed that a national cultural shift to prioritize productivity and outcome-focused governance is essential for Jamaica to meet its development goals and deliver public projects far more efficiently. “Right now, our system only cares if every ‘i’ is dotted and every ‘t’ is crossed – we call that good governance, and we ignore if people never get the road or the home they were promised,” he said. “We need to tie the performance of administrators, executives and ministers directly to whether citizens get the tangible outcomes that improve their lives. Effort must equal outcome, and we must measure success by delivery. This shift is the only path that will let Jamaica deliver 34 lots in far less than 21 years going forward.”