“My chest just feels tight every time I see the house. I can’t go back, no matter how they fix it up,” a woman in her late 40s tells the Jamaica Observer’s Real Estate on the Rock last week as she nervously picks at a loose thread on her skirt.

She has asked not to be identified by name, afraid she will be judged for her reluctance to leave her sister’s couch and return to her two-bedroom house. It has been nine months of slow repairs to recover from last October’s Hurricane Melissa but the house has a new roof, the walls have been freshly painted, and while there are still some finishing touches to be added, her house is habitable.

“I may try to rent it out after I finish,” the mortgagor mulls, biting her lip.