LOCAL engineers are exploring a number of alternative building materials which could make housing solutions more affordable in Jamaica.

The National Housing Trust lends a maximum of $3.5 million to individual borrowers and two persons can combine for a loan for a maximum of $7 million. But Jamaica Institution of Engineers (JIE) executive member Desmond Young, who has responsibility for housing matters, argues that current real estate prices are way beyond the reach of the majority of persons seeking a home.

“Even if you produce a unit for $6 million or $6.5 million, it’s difficult for the popluation to absorb it,” said Young.

“So what we are looking at is to try to finally design a unit that will fall somewhere in the $3 million to $3.5 million range,” he said.

Young was part of a team of JIE members at last week’s Monday Exchange meeting of Observer reporters and editors at the newspaper’s head office in Kingston.

He said timber and expanded polystyrene (EPS) are among the materials that are being earmarked by engineers to produce more affordable homes locally.

“They’re many options; let’s not just limit ourselves to reinforced concrete…we have to look at the affordability of the population, we have to put forward the concepts that are affordable,” he said.

Timber is commonly used to build homes in the USA and the use of EPS — insulated form of the widely used packaging material, polystyrene — is being explored agressively in neighbouring Trinidad and Tobago.

Young said there is a company in Jamaica that is now promoting that it can produce a building for under $4,000 per square-feet through the use of EPS. The normal cost is about $6,000 per square feet, so this could bring tremendous cost savings to developers and by extension persons seeking to buy a home in Jamaica.

To allay fears in a hurricane-conscious buyers market, Young added that the EPS solution has a concrete component which makes it resistant to hurricane-force winds.

“Even timber is safe in a hurricane, it’s just a matter of how you design it,” he said, adding “So if timber is safe, that is safe because it still has a concrete component.”