Editorial | Housing Melissa’s victims

Letter writer, Pastor Daniel Singh’s, suggestion that Jamaica lean on cruise shippers to use their vessels to temporarily accommodate people displaced by Hurricane Melissa is unlikely to gain traction.

That’s not because the idea is conceptually silly, or technically without merit. After all, cruise ships are massive floating hotels, many with far more rooms than some of their major land-based counterparts.

And while not quite the same thing, there is a precedent of sorts in these parts of refugees being accommodated, albeit for days rather than weeks, on a similar type of vessel. Just over three decades ago, in 1994, a US Navy hospital ship, the Comfort, docked in Jamaica, to screen, and temporarily house, Haitian boat people hoping to reach the United States to escape armed militias in their country.

The cruise companies, though, will be unwilling to tie-up their assets, literally and figuratively, in Jamaica when there is money to be made sailing the Caribbean Sea to other destinations that were unaffected by the hurricane.

What Pastor Singh’s proposal highlights, however, is both the urgency of finding solutions – which may require thinking out of the box and the mass mobilisation of Jamaicans to the cause – to the shelter crisis facing tens of thousands of people whose homes were either badly damaged or destroyed by the hurricane.

Asking Jamaicans who were not serious victims of the storm to consider opening their homes to those who were, is one possibility. There are models that have been used in different circumstances elsewhere, including partially compensating hosts, could be adapted to the Jamaican situation.

When Melissa swept across western Jamaica a little over two weeks ago as a category 5 hurricane, it packed maximum sustained winds of 185 mph an hour, with gusts of over 250 mph. By some estimates at least 120,000 homes lost their roofs. More than that were flooded by water Melissa’s rain dumped on the island. Many properties were inundated in mud.

LIVING ROUGH

Nearly 40,000 people are displaced and living rough. Many people fare only marginally better.

Many hurricane shelters remain open, although several were severely compromised by the storm. And The Gleaner is aware of the government’s efforts to provide temporary living facilities for displaced people, while they repair their homes or seek permanent living conditions.

But the government’s shelter solutions have not as yet been at the hoped for pace or scale.

This problem will probably be exacerbated by the heavy blow the hurricane inflicted on the Jamaican economy. Many people are without jobs and income and therefore lack the immediate ability to fund repairs.

This potential social crisis becomes increasingly real the longer people have to exist in the elements while dealing with psychological and economic trauma of the hurricane.

It is in this context that The Gleaner calls for urgency in addressing the shelter question, including expanding on a national scale (facilitated by the government in partnership with NGOs and faith-based institutions) what Jamaicans are already doing with their families and friends and through their churches. Which is opening their homes to Melissa’s victims.

There will be legitimate concerns and fears, especially in a society where trust levels are low, of people opening their homes to strangers on a wider basis. That is why any such programme not only has to be properly structured with reasonable incentives, but must be supported by strong mobilisation by the country’s leadership.

In other words, Prime Minister Holness should be at the forefront of this effort, eliciting the support of the political opposition, in driving home the scale of the Melissa crisis and the national effort that recovery will require.

For the suggested programme, Jamaica need not reinvent the wheel. It can modify the various arrangements used across Europe for nearly four years to accommodate Ukrainians who fled their country after the Russian invasion.

VOLUNTARILY REGISTER

In Jamaica’s case, home owners might voluntarily register, as the MP Damion Crawford suggested, through an appropriate government agency, for participation in the post-Melissa shelter scheme. The church or NGO a family trusts would match that family with vetted individuals. The guests would be accommodated for a specific, but short, period of time.

Like with Britain’s ‘Homes for Ukraine’ scheme, which accommodated over quarter million Ukrainians, or a similar programme in Poland that, at its height, housed an estimated 1.6 million, Jamaica’s government would provide a “thank you” stipends to help off-set the additional costs of households that take-in temporarily displaced persons.

While we expect that such a scheme would generally work well, frictions will inevitably arise in some instances. These can, by and large, be planned for.

The matching process, in this respect, is the first line of defence. And as the guarantor of the scheme, the government, so long as the arrangement between host and guest remains within the officially defined boundaries, would undertake to protect the rights and interests of the home owner from abuse by the lodger. That would include quick and mandatory eviction and/or the provision of alternative accommodation if the relationship between host and guest becomes untenable.

This would mean that the programme would, during its life, be subjected to robust oversight and evaluation.