Three Clarendon Families Get New Homes

Three families from the parish of Clarendon woke up this morning in brand-new houses that were provided under the New Social Housing Programme (NSHP).

Prime Minister, the Most Hon. Andrew Holness, handed over the units on Wednesday (July 12) to Fitzroy Edwards from Berrydale District in Scott’s Pass and Kadian Campbell from Darlow District, who both received three-bedroom houses, and Everton Samuels from Kemps Hill District in Race Course, who got a two-bedroom home.

Mr. Edwards, who is a single father of five children, including a 19-year-old son with physical disabilities, told JIS News that he is grateful to have decent and safe shelter for his family.

The family lived in a two-bedroom house, which had become dilapidated. Mr. Edwards said that due to financial challenges it was difficult to maintain the property and provide for his children, who are in primary and secondary school.

“It is really hard… but I try to take the best care of them,” he told JIS News.

Mr. Edwards said he intends to take advantage of the Government’s Operation Birthright programme to obtain outstanding birth certificates for three of his children in order to register them for assistance under the Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH).

For his part, 65-year-old Everton Samuels said he is grateful to finally step into a newly built home after Hurricane Ivan destroyed a portion of his previous house in 2004.

“In the previous home, it wasn’t so wonderful, but I had to just live through it. It was a nice two-bedroom board house, but Hurricane Ivan came and damaged it. My mother had lived there and her kitchen blew away, so I had removed half of it and made another kitchen [but] then it started to deteriorate,” he recounted.

He said he will occupy his new home with his 13-year-old grandniece who will begin high school in September.

Prime Minister Holness in his address at the handover in Kemps Hill District, noted that the Government continues to improve the efficiency of the programme, and the NSHP contractors are delivering housing solutions “way above industry standards”.

“For example, this unit, from start to finish was in a matter of weeks… less than eight weeks and we are usually budgeting 12 weeks for the completion of a unit. When we started out, we were delivering units at $7 million and $9 million… now we’re down to $5 million, $6 million and even $4 million at times,” he pointed out.

For his part, Member of Parliament for Clarendon South Western, Lothan Cousins, called on private-sector entities to partner with the Government to bolster the NSHP’s ability to deliver housing units to more of the country’s vulnerable citizens.

“This programme makes a lot of sense and we would want to see more… but the reality is that we can’t do all at the same time,” he said.