EXCLUDING THE POOR FROM LOW INCOME HOUSING PROGRAMS: THE ROLES OF STATE AGENCIES AND USAID IN JAMAICA*

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Abstract
This paper investigates why low‐income housing agencies in Jamaica do not accomplish their self‐imposed progressive mandates to assist large numbers of poor people. To expose what produces gaps between policy and practice, the analysis focuses on how housing programs are organized, both in Jamaica's two largest state agencies and in USAID. The crucial organizational features include the housing agencies' sources of funding, reliance on the private sector, and associated motives and interests. Among the three agencies, a set of inter‐related forces block low income access to housing assistance: (1) most of the policy influences of international development agencies such as USAID, (2) the pervasiveness and increased penetration of market logic into low‐income housing programs, (3) state agency bureaucratization and careerism, and (4) an elitist neglect of the housing needs of the poor. Prejudices against the poor based on the belief that they do not repay housing loans are not justified by empirical evidence, much less by the fact that the programs were explicitly created to improve their housing conditions.