KINGSTON, Jamaica. Ask most Jamaicans to picture a squatter and they will describe a zinc shack on a gully bank, a few families on the edge of a city, a problem of the poor living on someone else’s land. The official record tells a different story. Roughly one Jamaican in five lives in an informal settlement, most of those settlements are more than two decades old, and the largest single owner of the land they occupy is not a private landlord at all. It is the Government of Jamaica.
According to a 2004 national squatter survey cited in the Government’s own draft National Squatter Management Policy, the state owned about 75 per cent of the land on which Jamaica’s squatter settlements sit, split between the Commissioner of Lands and statutory bodies. A rapid assessment completed in 2008 counted about 754 informal settlements across the island. And the country’s title backlog is so large that, at the 8,000 titles a year the minister responsible says is now the maximum, clearing the 338,000 parcels recorded as unregistered would take more than four decades.
Jamaica is not unusual in having squatters. What is unusual is how high it sits on the regional league table, how much of the problem the state owns, and how little the island still knows, two decades after it set up a unit to manage squatting, about who lives where.
A billion people without a deed
The global picture rests on two very different measurements. The first is UN-Habitat’s slum count, which classifies a household as a slum household if it lacks any one of five things: improved water, improved sanitation, enough living space, a durable structure or secure tenure. On that test, 1.16 billion people qualified in 2024, and the agency says at least 3 billion live in inadequate housing of some kind.
The second is what people themselves say. Prindex, a survey of nearly 170,000 people in 140 countries published in 2020, found that 19 per cent of adults, close to one billion people, feared losing their home or land within five years. Fear was lowest in Singapore, at 4 per cent, and Rwanda, at 8 per cent. Rwanda’s place near the bottom is no accident: between roughly 2009 and 2013 it demarcated and registered more than 10.3 million land parcels, millions more than the 7.9 million first estimated, at a cost its implementing contractor puts at around US$7 a title.
The league table nobody can agree on
Lists of the “world’s biggest slums” circulate widely, mostly without traceable sources. A frequently shared 2016 ranking put Orangi Town in Karachi at 2.4 million, Ciudad Neza in Mexico at 1.2 million, Dharavi in Mumbai at 1 million and Kibera in Nairobi at 700,000, while conceding that no one knows Orangi Town’s exact population. Where governments have actually counted, the results are often smaller, and the places are often no longer informal at all.
| # | Place | Figure | Basis | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, Mexico | 1,077,208 | 2020 census (municipality) | Began as informal subdivisions; now a regularised municipality |
| 2 | Villa El Salvador, Lima, Peru | 414,000 | 2017 census, adjusted (district) | Founded by a 1971 land invasion |
| 3 | Khayelitsha, Cape Town, South Africa | 391,749 | 2011 census (main place) | Formal and informal housing mixed |
| 4 | Kibra, Nairobi, Kenya | 185,777 | 2019 census (constituency containing Kibera) | Long described as holding 1 million |
| 5 | Dharavi, Mumbai, India | about 100,000 homes | 2025 redevelopment survey (homes numbered, not people) | 259 hectares; total put at about 120,000 homes |
| 6 | Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil | 72,021 | 2022 census | Brazil’s largest favela |
| 7 | Sol Nascente, Brasília, Brazil | 70,908 | 2022 census | Second largest in Brazil |
| 8 | Paraisópolis, São Paulo, Brazil | 58,527 | 2022 census | Third largest in Brazil |
| 9 | Norwood, St James, Jamaica | about 7,000 | 2018 estimate, Housing Agency of Jamaica | Largest named settlement in Jamaica’s biggest squatting parish |
The table carries a lesson that matters for Jamaica. Ciudad Neza and Villa El Salvador were both built by people with no title, and both are now municipalities with mayors, budgets and property registers. Informality is often a stage, not a permanent condition. The question every government faces is whether that transition is planned or left to chance.
Myth Check: the million who were never there
For years, Kibera was routinely described as Africa’s largest slum, home to one million people or more, a figure repeated by major media and United Nations bodies, usually without a source. Kenya’s 2009 census counted 170,070 people in Kibera, yet in June 2010, during Jill Biden’s visit, the White House put it at 1.5 million. The Map Kibera Project, extrapolating from a door to door survey, suggested 235,000 to 270,000. The 2019 census recorded 185,777 people in the whole Kibra constituency.
Jamaica has its own version of the problem, running the other way. The World Bank’s development indicators, drawing on UN-Habitat, record that 57.1 per cent of Jamaica’s urban population lived in slums in 2018, second only to Haiti among the countries of Central America and the Caribbean listed. That figure is often quoted alongside the official estimate that about 20 per cent of Jamaicans live in squatter settlements, as if the two contradicted each other. They do not. The UN measure counts any urban household lacking secure tenure, adequate space, durable housing, water or sanitation, so a solid block house without a title can qualify. The 20 per cent figure counts people on land they do not own. Neither is a count of people living in shacks.
How the Caribbean deals with squatting
Across the region, the same problem has produced sharply different responses. Guyana counted more than 27,570 households on state land in 231 settlements in 2015. Its Central Housing and Planning Authority says that between 1990 and 2023 it regularised 164 of the 174 settlements it identified, benefiting 21,027 households. Trinidad and Tobago passed a State Land (Regularisation of Tenure) Act in 1998 that offers squatters a certificate of comfort as a first step to a lease. The chief executive of its Land Settlement Agency told a parliamentary committee that there were about 60,000 squatter families, of whom about 23,000 had applied for certificates. A committee member noted that only 111 of the agency’s 193 posts were filled.
| Country | Scale | Response |
|---|---|---|
| Jamaica | About 754 settlements (2008); about 20% of population | Operation PRIDE from 1994; survey of all parishes nearly complete in 2026; policy still in draft |
| Guyana | 27,570+ households on state land in 231 settlements (2015) | 164 of 174 targeted settlements regularised, 1990 to 2023 |
| Trinidad and Tobago | About 60,000 squatter families | 1998 Act; about 23,000 applied for certificates of comfort |
| Brazil | 16.4 million people in 12,348 favelas (2022) | Census counts every favela; mixed upgrading record |
| Peru | Over 1.2 million urban households titled, 1996 to 2003 | Among the largest urban squatter titling programmes |
Does a title change a life?
The modern case for titling was made most forcefully by the Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, who estimated in 2000 that the poor of the developing world held about US$9.3 trillion in “dead capital”: homes and businesses that could not be mortgaged or sold because they sat outside the formal property system. The figure became one of the most quoted numbers in development economics. It has also been widely questioned. Edesio Fernandes, writing for the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in 2002, called it a highly unlikely estimate and noted that after Peru’s mass titling programme, very few new owners actually obtained formal credit.
The evidence for other benefits is stronger. The economist Erica Field, studying the 1.2 million Peruvian titles, found in a 2007 paper that titling substantially increased the hours adults worked outside the home and reduced child labour, apparently because families no longer needed someone at home to guard the property. A World Bank study of the same programme cited by Jamaican researchers found that 75 per cent of titled households improved their homes, compared with 39 per cent of those without titles. A title, in short, is not a cash machine, but it changes how families spend their time and money.
Inside Jamaica’s settlements
Jamaica’s most detailed picture comes from the National Squatter Management Policy drafted by the Ministry responsible for housing, and the national survey that feeds it. By 2022 the Squatter Management Unit had surveyed 269 settlements in eight parishes: Clarendon, Manchester, St Elizabeth, Trelawny, St Ann, Hanover, Portland and St Mary. Everald Warmington, then a minister, told Parliament in May 2022 that those settlements held more than 83,000 people.
The findings undercut the idea of squatting as temporary. In 87 per cent of the surveyed settlements, residents had lived there for more than 20 years. The average was 2.5 people per habitable room, against a national standard of about one. And the settlements are concentrated in risk: the survey found 35 per cent on steep slopes, 34 per cent on floodplains, coasts or river beds, and nearly a quarter within 45 metres of the sea. The 2008 assessment had recorded 6 per cent on steep slopes, although the two surveys covered different sets of parishes, so the change should be read with care.
Squatting is not only residential. The Rural Agricultural Development Authority’s farmer register, cited in the policy, held 11,555 records of squatter farmers working 24,828.9 hectares of public and private land, about 61,000 acres, or a little over 2 per cent of Jamaica’s land area. The National Fisheries Authority found squatting on 51 fishing beaches in every parish except St Andrew.
In 2018 the managing director of the Housing Agency of Jamaica, Gary Howell, said he believed St James had the largest squatter development in Jamaica, and estimated that more than 20,000 people lived in informal settlements in the parish, about 7,000 of them in Norwood, roughly 2,000 in Flankers and over 4,000 across Barrett Hall, Grange Pen and Lilliput. St James was also one of the three parishes, with Westmoreland and St Elizabeth, that accounted for 91.6 per cent of housing damage from Hurricane Melissa, according to the damage assessment prepared with ECLAC, the IDB and the World Bank.
The state as the biggest squatter landlord
The single most consequential fact in the draft policy is ownership. A 2004 survey found the Government owned about 75 per cent of squatted land; the Commissioner of Lands was responsible for 47 per cent of that and statutory bodies for the rest. Twenty government entities together hold about 45,000 parcels, making the state the largest landowner in the country. Squatting in Jamaica is therefore, in large part, a question of how the state manages its own estate.
That history is long. The policy document traces squatting to post Emancipation settlement on abandoned estates, records 3,752 squatters in West Kingston in 1951, and lists a succession of programmes: slum clearance in the 1960s, settlement upgrading in the 1970s and 1980s, World Bank sites and services projects from 1976, Operation PRIDE in the 1990s and Relocation 2000. 1994 became known as the year of the squatter, after riots on 11 March 1994 in Flankers, Montego Bay, over about 27 hectares owned by the developer Joe Witter.
Operation PRIDE, launched by the PNP administration in 1994, was the most ambitious attempt at regularisation. Its record remains contested. A 2002 Commission of Enquiry, appointed under Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, found ministerial interference in its projects. The programme had been merged into the National Housing Development Corporation, which was renamed the Housing Agency of Jamaica in 2008 under the JLP government. According to the draft policy, 8,000 titles were transferred to beneficiaries between 2008 and 2018, while another 8,000 sat in the agency’s vaults awaiting full payment. The policy document records that the agency had issued 10,239 registered titles from 32 PRIDE projects covering 113 settlements by the end of 2018, which supporters cite as proof it delivered ownership; it also notes that land was sold well below its true value.
The law that rewards long occupation
Jamaican law has always given time a role. Under the Limitation of Actions Act of 1881, an owner who allows someone to occupy registered land adversely for 12 years loses the right to recover it; the policy document gives 30 years for some unregistered land and 60 years for Crown land. In 2016, in Recreational Holdings v Lazarus, the Privy Council confirmed that adverse possession can extinguish a registered title in Jamaica even against a later buyer who paid in good faith, because the Registration of Titles Act makes registered title subject to limitation rights that accrue after first registration.
Ministers are now trying to move those lines. In June 2026 Robert Montague, the minister with responsibility for land titling and settlements, told Parliament that anyone squatting on Crown land from 9 June 2026 would not be considered for any settlement programme, that sellers of government land would be prosecuted and buyers would lose their money, and that proposals were under discussion to shorten the adverse possession period for Crown land and lengthen it for private land. He said the Government had used drone and spatial surveys to record what was on Crown land.
Why there is no honest national count
Jamaica still cannot say precisely how many people live informally, and the reasons are instructive. The 754 figure dates from 2008. A 2005 police survey had found only 156 settlements, and the Planning Institute’s 2022 review referred to about 541 settlements identified before the national survey. The 20 per cent estimate comes from the rapid assessment and preliminary survey results and has been repeated by successive ministers. The national survey began in July 2019, ran short of its original J$37 million budget and, as of September 2026, was complete in 13 of 14 parishes, with St James, the parish thought to hold the most squatters, still to come.
Even the cost of fixing the problem is uncertain. The draft policy estimates in its text that surveying and designing subdivisions for 269 settlements would cost J$4.6 billion, while its own table totals J$3.71 billion, a gap of nearly J$900 million. And the titling machine is slow. Mr Montague said in September 2026 that the most the system could produce was about 8,000 titles a year, and that an electronic titling project, alongside a US$9 million Korea International Cooperation Agency fund for land management, could raise that to more than 25,000.
Cooper’s Pen and the human cost
The stakes became visible on 11 August 2026, when a demolition crew working under a bailiff flattened about 20 mostly concrete houses at Cooper’s Pen in Trelawny before dawn, with police detaining more than 20 men, according to reports at the time. Some residents said they had lived there for more than 30 years and that a private ownership claim had been in court since 2009. A local councillor called it inhumane, and the PNP caretaker for Trelawny Northern raised the humanitarian impact and questions of legality. The Prime Minister, Andrew Holness, pledged support for the displaced families, and the Government paid J$9.9 million in grants to 19 families in September, while officials stressed that the property was privately owned and the eviction was not a Government action. In October Mr Holness said land had been surveyed into lots for the families but would not be free, and that the Government would not compensate anyone for an unlawful act.
Both sides of the argument have force. Landowners, including the state, are entitled to protection of their property, and a policy that rewards occupation invites more of it; Mr Holness put it plainly at a June 2026 titling ceremony, telling those who want land that “it cannot be done illegally and informally”. Advocates for residents argue that people who have built block houses over decades, often with water and power connections approved by utilities, are not trespassers in any ordinary sense, and that removal without a place to go simply moves the problem to the next gully.
What This Means for Jamaica
For buyers, the practical message from the minister is the right one: check with the National Land Agency before paying for cheap land, because a seller with no title cannot pass one on, and land bought from someone squatting on Crown land can now be lost outright. For owners of idle land, the Privy Council’s ruling is a warning that 12 years of neglect can cost a title. For the market as a whole, four in ten parcels without registered title means a large share of the island’s housing wealth cannot be mortgaged, insured on normal terms or easily sold.
A 2018 World Bank study of informal building found, in six low income communities in Kingston, St Andrew and St Thomas, that 96 per cent of households who owned their homes had built them rather than bought them, and 65 per cent of those who built had no construction drawings. Much of Jamaica’s housing has been built by its people, outside the formal system. Bringing that housing into the system, safely and on land that will not wash away, is probably the largest property project the country has.
The long view
The difference between a slum and a suburb is often a survey, a title, a road and a generation. Jamaica has most of the tools: a national survey nearly finished, a draft policy, a titling agency and a government that owns most of the land in question. What it has lacked is pace.
Jamaica’s squatters are not living on someone else’s land so much as on the nation’s. Whether that land becomes an asset or a liability depends on whether the state finishes counting, and then starts titling, before the next storm does the counting for it.
Visit our YouTube Community ↗