“The Churches Have the Land”: A Priest Says Jamaica’s Churches Have Failed as Landowners

• A priest argued churches have been poor stewards of their land
• He said many churches do not know everything they own
• He urged partnerships with the NHT to build low-income housing
• He proposed taxing idle church land and ending adverse possession

As Jamaica’s churches complained in late 2018 about losing land to squatters, one priest used his Jamaica Observer column to argue that the churches themselves share much of the blame. In a piece headlined “The Church has failed in its stewardship of church lands”, published on November 6, 2018, Dr Raulston Nembhard, a priest and social commentator, said the problem was not surprising in a country where close to a million people are squatters.

Nembhard wrote that “collectively, churches in Jamaica are the second-largest owners of land next to the Government”, but that many do not have a full picture of what they own. He pointed to the Anglican Church’s continuing effort to map its holdings as a sign of how much remains unknown. Old, untitled lands from the colonial era, he said, are often found only after they have been occupied, which leaves churches with a pastoral dilemma. “It would be a public relations nightmare for any church to chase squatters off their land,” he wrote.

He argued that idle church land invites squatting, especially where land is out of reach for poor families. His proposed answer was a partnership with the National Housing Trust: “The churches have the land, and the NHT is bursting at the seams with cash,” he wrote, suggesting that low-income housing on church land could help both the churches’ finances and the country’s housing shortage.

Nembhard also criticised church bureaucracy, saying that “decisions are often tied up in unending meetings and processes which debilitate sensible and urgent action.” He went further, suggesting that the Government tax idle church properties above a certain acreage to push them into productive use, and that the law of adverse possession be changed so that registered owners could not lose their land however long it had been occupied.

Several of his ideas are still being debated years later: church land inventories, housing on church property and reform of adverse possession. For Jamaicans at home and abroad who support a local congregation, his column raises practical questions worth putting to church leaders. Does the church have a full list of its titles? Which lots are idle? Are any being occupied? And is there a plan to use them? Land that is not surveyed, titled and used is land a church may one day lose.

Follow Jamaica Homes on Youtube @jamaicahomes and Instagram @jamaica_homes and on Facebook @jamaicahomesnews Send us a message or email us at onlinefeedback@jamaica-homes.com or editor@jamaica-homes.com