Leonardo Blair, Enterprise Reporter
Don Mullings (left), president of the Masterbuilders Association of Jamaica. - RUDOLPH BROWN/CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHER.
Valerie Levy(right), one of the nation's leading real estate agents. - CARLINGTON WILMOT/FREELANCE PHOTOGRAPHER
WASTELAND
What do you do when you find out that the house and land you paid millions to secure is smack dab in an environmentally dangerous zone? You can barely count your losses and run because you cannot afford to move? Follow Enterprise Reporter Leonardo Blair in this latest series Wasteland, as he takes you into the belly of real estate grief and loss suffered by scores of Jamaicans. Find out why prospective homebuyers need to think about more than just liking a look, signing a contract and dutifully paying a mortgage.
TRUST. IT'S like a broken vessel in the housing market these days; especially when houses form part of joint projects between the National Housing Trust (NHT) and private developers. Recent floodings in some of these projects have shown up dangerous weaknesses in site selection and the accompanying environmental problems. Home buyers are now being urged to get the facts and be wary.
Carlene Clarke learned the hard way. And she raged after the flooding of her house in the joint housing development in Kennedy Grove, Clarendon, during Tropical Storm Wilma.
FEELING CHEATED
"I feel cheated," she had lamented to The Gleaner. "When I went to do the transaction with the developers this wasn't supposed to be my lot. I was supposed to be further up. In 2001 I told the staff at the place (developer, KIDDCO) to make sure is a good lot."
But it wasn't a good one and now she is living a shiftless existence, every day raging. This was not supposed to happen. At least, not now, not this bad, not with all the rules and laws guiding developers and government authorities in preparing housing developments.
Jamaica, says former Housing Minister Easton Douglas, has a comprehensive land policy document, and a national physical plan of the island. There is too, a slew of land laws which by themselves could bore a hole into the ground.
During an interview with Mr. Douglas at his residence a few weeks ago, he appeared expert in these laws. He was Housing Minister for nearly six years. He knew all the rules, even if he couldn't remember them all at once. During his time, he says, he followed all of them. He worked with the parish councils, the environmental agencies, the Health Ministry - every imaginable institution required to make a development safe.
Problems, like those in Kennedy Grove and Nightingale Grove, arise he says, when proper procedure is not followed, rules are compromised and scores of people get washed out of homes they worked hard to buy. He knows that fingers are pointing his way in the Kennedy Grove fiasco. He had the power under the Housing Act to declare the Kennedy Grove lands a housing area, during the time of the development, which was conceived about 1994.
See related story on the Housing Minister's responsibilities
