DUNKIRK (Passmore Town)

Community Profile

Fay Robinson Liaison Officer Email:fay.robinson@jsif.org Telephone:929-1620

Passmore Town (also known as Dunkirk) is an inner city community south-east of Cross Roads close to Rollington Town and to the north of the General Penitentiary. The community boundary of ‘Dunkirk’ covers parts of three areas: Passmore Town, Lower Franklyn Town and Brown’s Town. The topography of the area is gently sloping from north to south, towards the Harbour. The total area of ‘Dunkirk’ is 29 ha, a population of 5,982 (STATIN Population Census 2001) indicates a residential density of 201 persons per ha.

The name ‘Dunkirk’ is a nickname given primarily to McIntyre Villa, a government housing scheme comprising two and three storey apartments dating from the 1970s. It arose as an ironic comment on the warlike nature of the area surrounding McIntyre Villa.

The main physical characteristics of Passmore Town (Dunkirk) are of a well established, older, inner city housing area, with a large natural drain running through the centre of the community. Street patterns are well defined and individual houses, constructed of permanent materials, sit on their own plots. Primarily built in the 1930s these houses are in varying degrees of deterioration. McIntyre Villa by contrast is a relatively new build. Built in the 1970’s, it is reasonably maintained and in good general condition. An observation common throughout the community is the number of abandoned houses interspersed with empty plots. This situation appears to be less common on the western side or to the north of McIntyre Villa. Here there are also more signs of economic activity, for example, automotive repair carried out in home/workshops.

There is no formal CBO covering the entire project area. A Passmore Town Citizens’ Association has been founded in one of the gang areas to the south, but it appears to be confined to that one area. McIntyre Villa has a Management Committee and a Citizens’ Association.

A Technology Project for McIntyre Villa was undertaken by a local politician in 2001 when twenty new IBM computers were installed in the local community centre. They appear to be fully operational and in nearly new condition. They have a self-teaching programme to enable learners new to computing to operate them. However, other than three months of computer classes, the centre is not used, until most recently as an ad hoc shelter for those who abandoned their homes due to the latest eruption of violence.