Introduction: Historically, whenever there are wars, world oil and financial crises, natural disasters, governments in developed as well as developing nations have responded by using rent control to protect tenants. Since 1990s, Jamaica has experienced banking, world oil, food and public debt crises was well as the recession; yet no study has examined the health status of tenants. Objectives: To determine factors that account for 1) health status, 2) self-reported illness and 3) health coverage of tenants in Jamaica, and compare particular demographic characteristics of tenants with that of the population as well as health, health conditions and health seeking behaviour in order to establish disparities. Results: Poverty among tenants is a rural phenomenon (69 out of every 100 poorest). Two out of every 5 tenants in the poorest income quintile sought medical care, 27 out of every 50 purchased the prescribed medication, 21% had chronic illnesses, 29% received social assistance and wealthy tenants were 4.7 times (95%CI: 0.90 – 24.9) more likely to have good health than those in the lower class. Three out of every 4 sick tenants utilized public health care services. Methods: This work utilized a 2007 national cross-sectional probability survey. A sub-sample of 1, 062 respondents (tenants) were taken from the initial sample of 6,783 respondents. Logistic regression analyses were used to establish 1) self-rated health, 2) presence of illness and 3) health insurance coverage models. Conclusion: These findings provide an understanding of tenants, and can be used to make policy intervention in the future.