Letter of the Day | Jamaica is not being built for Jamaicans

THE EDITOR, Madam:

There is a troubling pattern unfolding across Jamaica that deserves serious public attention. More and more of our housing market is being priced in US dollars. Our island is increasingly being marketed, priced, and developed for everyone except the people who actually live here. After Hurricane Melissa, 24,000 houses were lost, and the housing crisis deepened further.

Walk through any real estate listing or rental platform today and you will find properties advertised in United States dollars, not Jamaican dollars. Trying to buy a house as a Jamaican on a Jamaican wage is daunting. A basic two- to three-bedroom residential property in parishes such as Kingston and St Andrew or St Catherine is currently listed between US$30,000 and US$146,000, while mid-range and luxury homes across the island climb from US$200,000 to US$800,000. The average worker earns only J$884,000 per year before deductions. After mandatory deductions, their actual take-home sits at around J$71,000 per month. Even saving every single dollar of their income and spending nothing on food, rent, or anything else, a minimum wage worker would need roughly 37 to 147 years to afford these properties.

The average Jamaican life expectancy is around 74 years, meaning properties priced at US$500,000 and US$800,000 are literally unpurchasable within a lifetime on minimum wage. The situation is no better for renters. With rental prices exceeding J$100,000 per month, the average minimum wage worker is already J$28,543 short before spending a single dollar on anything else. To cover rent alone, a worker would need to earn roughly J$24,000 per week at minimum, and that still leaves nothing for food, transport, utilities, or any other basic necessity.

In other words, a minimum wage worker in Jamaica cannot afford to rent, let alone buy. They are priced out of both markets entirely on a single income. This creates a compounding crisis: brain drain. As the cost of living in Jamaica becomes unsustainable relative to other developing countries, skilled workers are increasingly choosing to leave rather than remain trapped in a market that was never designed for them.

Jamaica must be built for Jamaicans. Policymakers, developers, and institutional investors need to reckon with the reality that pricing ordinary citizens out of their own country is not development. It is displacement.

MARK LEWIS