Aubyn Hill
LAST THURSDAY, while addressing the Women's Leadership Initiative as their guest speaker at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller rounded off her speech with a passionate commitment to continue to work to find housing solutions for the very poor in our society. She spoke with feeling about a young girl and a grandmother who have to change their clothes almost in full view of all the men around them and who are forced to defecate in scandal bags because there were no suitable housing and appropriate toilet facilities. The Prime Minister took this message to a group of women who can only be called 'women of substance' in our society - and a few good men who were invited to this essentially women's event.
A NATIONAL DISGRACE
Many of us do not realise what a significant contributor poor housing is to poverty and crime. Poor housing in very cramped inner-city communities magnify this significant crime-producing problem. It has to be a national disgrace when we as a society allow sometimes 10 to 12 persons, including mother, father, grandparents, other relatives and children of varying ages to live in one room. Poor housing means that these children are exposed at the earliest possible age to the kind of sexual activity that robs them of their innocence and as soon as they come to puberty robs them of their youth. Inadequate housing - in many cases that means no housing at all - means those same 'children' begin to have babies far too early and the whole cycle of poverty starts all over again.
We know we have a real and true housing and poverty problem when the issue is converted into a popular song. It is more poignant when a child star is the voice of that music. 'QQ', the stage name of the pre-teen child whose real name is Kareem Dawkins, gave voice to the terrible housing truth with these words, "Better mus come. Five of us live in one room and six of us eat out of one spoon ..." the mistake that is made by those of us who are more privileged is that we think 'one room' is actually a real room as we know it.
A BASIC SOLUTION
Regrettably, that 'room' that is being immortalised in song and is the reality of that young girl (open to carnal abuse) and grandmother (also open to rape) is a rickety little shack sometimes made out of metal sheets and quite often corrugated paper. These 'rooms' are lacerated with holes the size of windows which expose these vulnerable women to the eyes and passions of unemployed, quite often uneducated strong young men who would prefer to work most times than be converted into ruthless predators on vulnerable women and others in their communities. Getting them to work on these housing projects could also move them into the ranks of the gainfully employed.
A few months ago, I had the privilege of participating in a private tour by a project manager from the National Housing Trust (NHT), while they were constructing housing in the Denham Town and communities adjoining the Boys' Town Complex. I had not been in that area for probably 35 years (most of which I was away from Jamaica) and it was a real eye opener as to how people live and the hope that the NHT was bringing to these communities with the addition of these housing units.
Some months later I was invited back by a group of social consultants who are helping the residents to migrate from their current pitiful living conditions to the more agreeable ones that were being completed by the NHT. The function was in the evening at the community centre in Tivoli Gardens and, as is my custom, before going to speak to the prospective occupants of the new houses I had to do some homework.
One of the things I found out is that many of the new occupants had to be taught how to use a flush toilet in that they sometimes would use the wrong container for excrement. In 2006 and with over 40 years of independence this is a stinging indictment on all of us - the various governments which have governed us since independence, all the ministers of housing who have occupied that ministry and certainly all the prime ministers who have led these governments.
But it is easy to point a finger at government officials and forget those huge business houses - including the bank that I had the privilege to lead for two years, NCB; Scotiabank, GraceKennedy and Company, The Gleaner Company group, Lascelles deMercado, Pan Caribbean Group, Life of Jamaica, the Insurance Company of the West Indies, Jamaica National and Victoria Mutual building societies - and all the other big companies which do business in Jamaica. Many profit from inner-city communities, but have done little or nothing to help create solutions to this perennial poverty, and crime-producing disease called poor and non-existent housing.
HELP IS AVAILABLE
Many of our business houses are rightly about the business of building wealth, but we need to come to the realisation that 'building wealth - making success happen' is also about the reduction of poverty and a significant means of reducing poverty is simply to put poor people into better housing where children have the chance to be children and can use a basic area where they can study without being stepped upon by their siblings or being physically and sexually abused by adults. I believe there is a real opportunity for the Government and the private sector to come together in creating housing solutions for our inner-city brethren in Kingston and the neighbourhoods in Montego Bay, Spanish Town and Ocho Rios.
A few months ago, I attended a development conference in New Orleans at which, among other issues, the pressing need for good housing in the Latin American and Caribbean area was addressed. Institutions such as the Inter-American Development Bank (where, I understand, the Prime Minister gave a ringing speech at its headquarters in Washington for which she was given a long standing ovation) is willing to work with the government and the private sector in public-private partnerships to provide housing solutions and other infrastructural development facilities for the poor.
Other institutions such as the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the European Investment Bank are willing to assist. But, beyond all these we have to help ourselves by finding the money, ingenuity and commitment to clear the lack-of-housing scar from the social and political landscape of our country. The Prime Minister is right to make the provision of decent housing to many more of our citizens a national priority high on her targeted achievements priority list.
Aubyn Hill is the CEO of Corporate Strategies Ltd., a restructuring and financial advisory firm. Respond to: writerhill@gmail.com
