DAILY CARTOON: The House Is Ready. Where Is the Land?

A call for idle lots, including those owned by Jamaicans overseas, puts land at the centre of the social housing push.

KINGSTON, Jamaica, 26 October 2026

The story behind the cartoon

In today’s cartoon, Sean and his neighbours stare up at a brand new home swinging from a crane with nowhere to set it down, while the lot below sits overgrown behind a padlocked gate and its owner’s plane disappears over the hills. It is a joke with a serious point. Jamaica can design and build social housing. Finding land to put it on is proving much harder.

Speaking at the handover of a two family home in Greendale district, Bull Bay, St Andrew, on 21 October, the Prime Minister appealed to people who own land they are not using, including those who have migrated and do not plan to return, to approach the Government about selling it for the New Social Housing Programme. “Approach the government and say, ‘We would probably like to sell you this piece of land because it’s there; it’s good for housing’,” he said.

The programme builds the house, but beneficiaries must first have the land, through outright ownership or a long term lease or arrangement with the owner. At the same event, the Member of Parliament for St Andrew East Rural, who is also Speaker of the House, said construction in her constituency has been held back by hilly terrain, the locations of families in need and the fact that many of them do not own the land they live on. She appealed to landowners in Jamaica and abroad to come forward.

Why it matters

Land sits underneath almost every housing problem in Jamaica. The Prime Minister tied the appeal directly to squatting, noting that many Jamaicans have no inheritance or other asset passed down to them and end up in irregular settlements. Earlier this month, the Chief Technical Director for Housing, Urban Renewal and Projects at the Ministry of Economic Growth and Infrastructure Development said many parcels across the island remain unregistered, and that without legal title, families often cannot get financing to repair or expand the homes they already have.

The programme is modest in scale. About 358 homes have been built so far, with each of the 63 constituencies receiving five units a year. Its next phase will place two households on a single lot, which the Prime Minister described as bringing order to the old tenement yard and big yard way of living. The Greendale building holds two three bedroom apartments for two related families.

The question for landowners

For the diaspora, and for families sitting on inherited lots that nobody uses, the appeal raises practical questions about price, valuation, title and how offers will be assessed. Reports of the appeal did not set out those details, so owners who are interested will need to ask before they commit.

Jamaica has the plans and the builders. What it needs now is the land.