A call to divert part of the money the State draws from the National Housing Trust into roads, drains and water for informal communities reopens a basic question for Jamaica’s housing policy: whether to clear informal settlements or improve them.
MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica, 8 October 2026, The Opposition’s spokesman on housing and sustainable living has proposed that at least 30 per cent of the money the Government withdraws each year from the National Housing Trust (NHT) for budgetary support be ring-fenced for upgrading informal settlements, putting the condition of hundreds of unplanned communities back at the centre of the housing debate.
Speaking at a World Habitat Day conference in Montego Bay on Monday, the Senator said the annual drawdown, which he put at J$11.4 billion, should be capped, with a portion directed to roads, drainage, retaining walls and water supply in communities where people already live, according to reports in the Gleaner and the Jamaica Observer. He said Jamaica still has more than 700 informal settlements and that roughly 30 per cent of people lack secure tenure.
A shift in the Opposition’s position
The proposal marks a change in emphasis. The Jamaica Observer reported that when he addressed the Senate in February, the spokesman called for the annual extraction from the NHT to end, so that the Trust could return to its core mandate of building affordable housing. His latest call accepts that some transfer may continue, but asks that part of it be tied to informal communities. He argued that Jamaica has a mortgage policy, not a housing and settlement policy.
He also argued for a return to incremental housing, in which the State provides land and basic infrastructure and families build over time. The Gleaner reported that he suggested the NHT offer material loans of around J$2.5 million, covering blocks and a roof, instead of mortgages of about J$9 million. He linked the idea to the fact that more than half of the workforce is informally employed, a group that conventional mortgage lending struggles to reach.
The conference organiser, the community organisation COMAND, backed the proposals. Its executive chairman, a member of the People’s National Party, said the group is pressing for J$8 billion from the NHT for inner-city and marginalised communities, and that many people in informal communities contribute to the Trust without benefiting from it, the Observer reported.
Montego Bay wants more say
The same conference heard from the Mayor of Montego Bay, who chairs the St James Municipal Corporation. According to the Gleaner, he called for greater fiscal decentralisation and stronger planning powers for local government, arguing that the housing question is at its core a development question that takes in land use, infrastructure, transport and social equity.
He named Canterbury, Grange Pen, sections of Albion and communities around the North and South Gullies as areas facing insecure tenure, flooding, inadequate infrastructure and limited public space. He described expanding land regularisation and secure tenure as a priority, noting that the Government has begun the work but more is needed. Municipal corporations already handle development control and local planning, but the mayor said local authorities often work with limited money and authority.
A policy still on the drawing board
None of this arrives in a vacuum. Days before the conference, the Gleaner, citing the Jamaica Information Service, reported that the ministry responsible for housing had completed a national survey of informal settlements in 13 of the 14 parishes, with work in St James expected to begin by the end of September. The ministry’s chief technical director for housing said the findings will help determine which communities can be regularised and which may need relocation, and will support a National Squatter Management Policy that is still being prepared.
That policy has a long history. According to a Gleaner commentary in August, a Squatter Management Unit was set up in 2006. The 2020 Throne Speech committed the Government to completing a national squatter survey to guide the policy and an implementation plan, and the 2021 Throne Speech reported progress. A second draft of the policy was expected to go to Cabinet in early 2022. In August this year, after houses were demolished at Coopers Pen in Trelawny, the Prime Minister said the Government would develop a programme to formalise and regularise irregular communities. The question now is less whether Jamaica recognises the problem than how quickly the survey becomes action, and who pays for it.
The NHT transfer is a politically sensitive answer to that question. The Opposition’s proposal would redirect part of a J$11.4 billion annual transfer that now supports the national budget, money the spokesman had wanted kept within the Trust altogether only months ago. Channelling some of it into settlement upgrading would put NHT funds into communities where, by COMAND’s account, many residents pay into the Trust but have little prospect of a conventional NHT mortgage.
What upgrading would change
For the property market, the significance lies in what secure tenure and basic infrastructure do to value. A house on untitled land beside an unpaved, flood-prone gully is difficult to sell, insure, mortgage or pass on cleanly to the next generation. Regularised plots turn occupation into ownership, and roads, drainage and water make that ownership worth more, creating an asset that families can borrow against and build on. The spokesman also restated his party’s long-standing call to cut the adverse possession period for Government lands from 60 to 25 years, the Observer reported, a change that would shorten the path to title for long-term occupiers of state land.
There is also a resilience argument. The Montego Bay communities the mayor named are among those he said face flooding, and safety will weigh heavily in any choice between upgrading and relocation. That is the decision the national survey is meant to inform, and its data should make the case clearly, community by community, rather than leaving outcomes to demolition notices.
The proposals remain proposals. None of the reports carried a Government response to the call for a ring-fenced share of the NHT transfer, and any change would need to be reflected in the national budget and the Trust’s own planning. But with the settlement survey nearly finished and a squatter management policy still pending, the next few months will show whether Jamaica treats its informal communities as a liability to be cleared or as neighbourhoods to be finished. For the more than 700 settlements cited by the Opposition, that distinction will decide whether the homes people have already built ever become property in the full sense of the word.
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