Agency pushing to get titles into hands of J’cans

MANDATED TO upgrade squatter settlements and provide housing solutions for low- and middle-income families, the Housing Agency of Jamaica (HAJ) is on a mission to provide thousands of persons with titles for the properties they own.

According to chairman of the board of directors, Norman Brown, thousands of persons have been given their land titles in recent times.

“We have been engaged in the distribution of titles to residents of several communities across the country. We have had community meetings and our target for this year is to distribute between 1,500 and 2,000 titles,” Brown told a media briefing yesterday. “I would say over the past four years, the agency has distributed in excess of 5,000 land titles to occupants of these communities.”

TITLES KEY

The HAJ’s announcement came months after Prime Minister Andrew Holness indicated that getting land titles to Jamaicans would be a key role for his administration. The process announced by Holness was linked to a 2014 memorandum of understanding between the Land Administration and Management Programme and the Development Bank of Jamaica for the provision of a $90million grant to fund the delivery of land titles. “We are seeking to empower all Jamaicans with a renewed sense of ownership and pride in Jamaica by ensuring that each person has a title for their land. We want every Jamaican to have a vested interest in building Jamaica, land we love,” Holness announced last August. With the HAJ also moving to get titles into the hands of land owners, the two programmes should lead to a dramatic increase in the number of persons with their deeds.