Until Hurricane Melissa, Hurricane Gilbert was the strongest hurricane on record to make landfall in Jamaica. A category 3 tropical storm, its 130-mph winds devastated Jamaica’s agricultural fields, wiped out medical facilities, and destroyed more than 100,000 homes.

I only know Gilbert through stories: stories of how Jamaicans frantically stocked provisions. Stories of zinc roofs tearing off and families sheltering in place. Gilbert was supposed to be an outlier. But in the last two years the Caribbean has endured Category 4 and 5 hurricanes with Beryl and Melissa, suggesting that today, climate change has turned generational events seasonal, and the rare has become routine.

That’s why building climate-resilient homes must be at the centre of how countries like Canada support developing nations such as Jamaica.

Over the last decade, the Government of Jamaica has improved their disaster preparedness, amassing a layer of financial protection to provide swifter relief.

Most recently, the country renewed a $150 million catastrophe bond from the World Bank and secured multiple streams of financing through insurances like the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF)s. All considered, Jamaica has roughly $820 million USD available in financing to support Hurricane Melissa recovery efforts. Yet, models have estimated economic impacts around $7 billion, or 40 per cent of GDP. Unfortunately, this massive funding gap falls squarely on citizens who cannot rebuild. Here’s why.

For many Jamaicans, homebuilding is not managed by developers but are instead built “informally” by families themselves. Reports reveal that between 50 and 70 per cent of housing developments are informally developed, generally done outside of code requirements. Homes are often constructed over several years using boards, concrete blocks, and inexpensive zinc roofs. In other cases, some homes in rural, peri-urban, or hillside communities lack proper foundations and reinforcements. Generally speaking, these are homes that are highly susceptible to landslides, flooding, and roof destruction. Homes that are not climate resilient.

To make matters worse, because these homes do not meet formal building codes, insurers deem them too risky to cover. Consequently, industry sources suggest under 50 per cent of Jamaica’s homes are insured, with many being underinsured. So, after disasters and housing destruction most impacted families are left with nothing.

International instruments like CCRIF and catastrophe bonds do not change that. These funding instruments are paid out to the Government of Jamaica to foster macro-fiscal stability as opposed to micro-level recovery. As such, emergency responses are prioritized because they restore the general accessibility to and around the island. Indeed, this is a necessary reaction. But citizens fall between the cracks because there are no direct or immediate cash transfers to help Jamaican citizens with informally built homes rebuild to code. This ultimately creates a vicious cycle of climate vulnerable builds, while community-level recovery drags on for years.