Derelict properties could be brought back to life in order to help Government meet its housing demand and assist in relocation.
Raymond Lorde, acting deputy general manager of the National Housing Corporation (NHC), said it was looking to access properties earmarked for destruction by the Environmental Protection Department (EPD).
He was responding to questions and suggestions about keeping communities together in cases where people had to be relocated because of emergencies, including land slippage. Member of Parliament for St Peter, Colin Jordan, in his query, noted that keeping communities together was important “because what we’re seeing in our communities is a result of some level of dysfunction in terms of people moving around”.
He said that some residents were moving to different areas and not blending or meshing even though they were in the same geographic space.
He spoke about Mangrove, French Village and Lonesome Hill, all in his constituency of St Peter, stating that they were people who wanted to stay as a community.
Jordan asked: “Now, the question that I have is when we look at a terrace unit, for example, if we take that same principle of keeping communities together, would I be able to get a commitment from the Ministry of Housing, Lands and Maintenance that when units become available . . . that persons from nearby who are on the list will get preference?”
He suggested that there may be a need to recognise that a little bit more must be spent to keep communities together by developing smaller tracts of land.
Minister of Housing, Lands and Maintenance Chris Gibbs agreed with the suggestion of keeping neighbourhoods together, adding that using small lots in existing communities and areas could work out to be cheaper “because we already have established infrastructure”.
He said the Bullens, St James community was an example where the principle of keeping a community together was carried out but there were some instances where the mission of the ministry was to offload very dense areas, such
as The Pine which had a lot of issues “in these types of areas as it pertains to crime”.
Priorities
“We know that the frustrations are high in these types of areas that we actually have to offload those communities so that people can stretch their legs and exhale and the honourable member for St Michael South East will tell you that one of her priorities as a representative is to be able to achieve this so that she can have safer communities. So I think that this is a case-by-case basis,” Gibbs said.
He said the ministry had been surveying vacant lots where it could erect houses in communities.
The minister turned the response over to Lorde, who is the substantive chief planning officer, who said that the agency was looking at the published EPD notices “to see where we can access those housing units, those derelict houses”.
“We run a project now to identify a minimum of 20 and to perfect an instrument that will allow us to access those lands. Those are private lands,” Lorde said.
He pointed to what was done in St Peter recently, with the Six Men’s Life Improvement Project, where a vacant area within that section was identified and a subdivision done. (AC)
