Hurricanes and High Costs Shape the Caribbean’s Housing Future

Legacies of land inequality, intensifying storms and rising real property costs are combining to push millions of Caribbean families further from secure, resilient homes.

Editorial – When Hurricane Beryl tore through the Caribbean in July 2024, the storm left more than shattered roofs in its wake. For thousands of families in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada and Jamaica, the storm’s destruction reopened a wound familiar across the region: the enduring fragility of housing, land and property systems.

Aerial footage of Petit Martinique shows the trail of destruction left by Hurricane Beryl in July 2024. The storm ripped roofs from homes and battered fragile coastal settlements, underscoring how climate extremes magnify the Caribbean’s long-standing housing and land vulnerabilities. (Footage: Brandon Clement)

From informal settlements on flood-prone coasts to families locked out of overheated property markets, the Caribbean’s housing dilemma is less a passing storm than a permanent climate.

At the heart of the crisis lies an old story of land and power. Across much of the Caribbean, patterns of plantation agriculture and colonial land distribution left a legacy of concentrated ownership and weak tenure security. In Jamaica, for example, the World Bank estimates that more than 30 percent of households still lack legally recognised titles, limiting their ability to secure mortgages or disaster recovery assistance.

In Trinidad and Tobago, more than 23,000 households occupy state land without formal deeds, part of a squatter regularisation backlog dating to the late 1990s.

The problem is compounded by informal urbanisation. Cities such as Port-au-Prince (Haiti), Kingston (Jamaica) and Nassau (Bahamas) have seen sprawling growth on marginal land, much of it without proper planning or services. Informal communities are disproportionately located in hazard zones – coastal plains, riverbanks and unstable hillsides – meaning that storms, floods and earthquakes strike hardest where housing is least resilient.

Climate stress: Storms, sea levels and slow-onset risks

Climate change magnifies every weakness in the housing system. The Bahamas offers one of the starkest examples: Hurricane Dorian in 2019 destroyed or damaged nearly 9,000 homes, causing US$1.48 billion in housing losses alone, with informal migrant settlements on Abaco obliterated almost overnight. Five years on, many survivors still live in temporary conditions, while legal and political disputes delay reconstruction.

Debris from Hurricane Dorian still scars parts of Abaco in The Bahamas, where the 2019 storm destroyed nearly 9,000 homes and displaced thousands. Informal settlements such as The Mudd and Pigeon Peas were levelled, exposing how vulnerable communities bear the brunt of the region’s most powerful storms. (Photo: Marco Bello / Reuters)

Guyana and Suriname face a different threat. More than 80 percent of Guyana’s population lives in a narrow coastal belt below sea level. The World Bank has warned that a one-metre rise in sea level could displace more than half of the population, placing immense pressure on housing and land-use planning. Suriname’s capital, Paramaribo, has already endured recurrent flooding, forcing government and donor-backed drainage projects to take priority.

The human toll: Who bears the brunt

For middle-class Caribbean households, rising land and construction costs are pushing home ownership further out of reach. In the Cayman Islands, officials describe the affordability crisis as a “wicked problem,” where local residents compete with foreign investors and short-term rental demand. In Barbados, despite government plans to deliver 10,000 housing solutions, mortgage requirements and land scarcity limit access for younger families and low-income earners.

But it is the poor who carry the heaviest burden. In Haiti, more than 1.3 million people are displaced by gang violence, many sheltering in makeshift camps without tenure security or access to services. In Jamaica, the National Housing Trust struggles to keep pace with applications that far exceed annual allocations. And across the region, women and migrants face additional barriers – from discriminatory regularisation policies to exclusion from formal credit markets.

Government and multilateral responses: Patchwork progress

Caribbean governments have tried varied approaches. Dominica’s Housing Recovery Project, launched after Hurricane Maria in 2017, channels World Bank and EU support into building to resilient standards, offering a model of hazard-proof reconstruction. Jamaica’s 'Rebuild Jamaica' initiative is rolling out grants and loans for owner-driven repair, while Barbados has expanded rent-to-own schemes to ease affordability pressures.

The Government of Jamaica launches the Rebuild Jamaica initiative in 2024, pledging grants and loans to help thousands of families repair homes damaged by Hurricane Beryl and build to more resilient standards. (Footage: Public Broadcasting Corporation)

Regional institutions are also stepping in. The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) has scaled up concessional financing for resilient housing and disaster risk management, while calls have been made for a regional land policy framework, although progress has been uneven. The UN system, meanwhile, continues to prioritise shelter support in emergency response, as seen in rapid assessments following Hurricane Beryl.

Yet effectiveness remains mixed. Post-disaster programmes often face slow disbursement, land tenure disputes and political bottlenecks. In The Bahamas, recovery has been criticised as inequitable, leaving migrant and low-income communities at the margins. In Trinidad and Tobago, regularisation drives stall amid enforcement challenges and legal disputes. And in Haiti, insecurity has made donor interventions nearly impossible at scale.

Stakeholder voices: Tension and advocacy

Professional bodies have been vocal in framing solutions. The Caribbean Association of Housing Finance Institutions warns that without deeper mortgage reform and subsidies, affordability will remain out of reach. Architects and engineers’ associations stress the need for region-wide resilient building codes, pointing to Dominican success stories. Real estate and property developers push for looser investment restrictions, while consumer affairs groups argue that speculative foreign demand drives prices beyond local reach.

International organisations echo these concerns. UN-Habitat has underscored that secure tenure is a precondition for resilience and sustainable development, urging Caribbean states to integrate land governance into climate adaptation plans. The World Bank’s latest strategies for Haiti, Guyana and Suriname highlight land administration reform and hazard zoning as prerequisites for stability and growth.

Public sentiment: Frustration and resilience

For ordinary citizens, the housing crisis is lived daily – in leaking roofs, in unaffordable rents, in waiting lists that stretch decades. Anger often spills into public forums and media debates, with civil society organisations demanding greater transparency in housing allocations and disaster recovery funds. Yet the Caribbean is also known for resilience: communities mobilise quickly after storms, church groups and diaspora networks raise funds, and informal builders reconstruct homes long before official programmes take shape.

What comes next

Experts caution that without structural reforms – fit-for-purpose land administration, affordable finance, hazard-aware planning and regional resilience frameworks – the Caribbean will remain trapped in a cycle of disaster, displacement and recovery. With climate projections pointing to stronger storms and rising seas, the stakes are existential.

Still, the region holds promise. Initiatives in Dominica and Jamaica show that resilient housing, when well-financed and community-driven, can become a foundation for development. Multilateral support is expanding, and professional bodies are increasingly aligned on the urgency of reform. The question is whether political will, financing and public trust can converge quickly enough.