A New Law Could Finally Force Jamaica’s Gated Communities to Pay Their Dues

• Shared Communities Act tabled in Parliament
• Targets unpaid gated-community maintenance fees
• Creates legally recognised community corporations
• Stricter penalties for non-compliant owners

A proposed law aimed at tightening regulation in Jamaica’s rapidly growing gated communities is gaining support from residents and real estate stakeholders, who say it could finally address long-standing problems: unpaid maintenance fees, weak rule enforcement, and security concerns that have dogged shared developments for years.

The Shared Communities Act, 2026, tabled in Parliament, would require property owners within gated or shared developments to become members of a legally recognised community corporation responsible for maintaining common spaces and collecting contributions. The bill includes mandatory maintenance payments, stronger enforcement powers for management bodies, and stricter penalties for owners who do not comply.

The problem the bill targets is not new. Jamaica has had a comparable framework for apartment buildings since the Registration (Strata Titles) Act became law in 1969, letting developers issue individual titles for units stacked on top of each other rather than only for land-based property, and creating a strata corporation to manage shared walls, roofs and driveways. A dedicated Commission of Strata Corporations was established in 2010 specifically because, in the regulator’s own words at the time, poor management was increasingly blamed for dragging down property values as complexes fell into disrepair. As late as 2011, 521 strata properties, concentrated in Portmore and St Catherine, were still unregistered and facing prosecution threats, out of roughly 1,532 strata corporations across the island.

Gated communities, unlike strata apartment buildings, have largely operated without an equivalent legal structure, relying instead on voluntary homeowner associations with limited power to actually compel payment or enforce rules against a non-cooperative neighbour. That gap has become more consequential as gated developments have expanded well beyond apartment complexes into standalone house communities, where shared roads, gates, security and common landscaping still need funding whether or not every homeowner chooses to pay their share.

The Shared Communities Act would close that gap by giving community corporations the same kind of legal standing strata corporations already have: the ability to compel membership, collect contributions with real penalties attached, and enforce shared rules consistently rather than relying on goodwill. For buyers weighing a gated community purchase, the legislation, if passed, would mean checking a community corporation’s compliance record becomes as relevant to due diligence as checking a strata corporation’s has been for apartment buyers for over a decade.