Ronald Thwaites | Informality versus progress

Yes, progress. At least that’s a process. Forget about prosperity. Neither this Government nor any other operating on the same premises of political economy can deliver prosperity to the mass of the Jamaican people.

Watch how in the next month or so our increasingly prosperous rulers scramble to conflate small, significant things like a little less garbage, a ‘ten grand’ to buy an Independence dinner, a free bashment, 25 cents off gas, the back-to-school grant all as evidence of prosperity.

Bang the desks some more. Pathetic! Gwan try to persuade us that the big money spent on the Kigali escapade was for everyone’s benefit, when road can’t fix, patty turn luxury and pickney can only eat once a day, and summer school look like it flop.

Social peace, the sense of achievable purpose, family security, all are contingent on affordable housing, which begins with land tenure.

Reducing the informality of land tenure is one area where great progress towards less crime and sustainable economic progress can be achieved without massive capital cost. Linked to ensuring real quality education and training for all, land tenure reform is the most important progressive area for national endeavour at sixty years of Independence.

One of the most frustrating aspects of political representation is the difficulty of helping people to move from the informality of their life relations into the formal structures of civic responsibility, meaningful work, and the acquisition of assets. Most feel that the only chance of ‘stepping up inna life’ is to migrate. Even Old Harbour is too expensive.

DEEPLY APPREHENSIVE

In the inner cities, tens of thousands of citizens live on properties which they do not own and for which they pay no rent, no tax, nor utility costs. Housing stock is uniformly run-down because there is no access to capital for maintenance or expansion. Residents make community, and fashion lives, in precarious circumstances. Ordered family life and succession prove difficult, credit is unavailable (no matter how much NHT contribution you pay), and social relations are easily strained.

Independence 60 finds the nation sullen, owning little of lasting value, and deeply apprehensive of the dangerous headwinds of material want, criminality and official arbitrariness.

Across Jamaica, the classic description by Hernando De Soto of dead assets describe the nation’s second most crucial resource – land. Too much of it is left idle, owned by somebody but cared by nobody, yet subject to use by anybody. That is the antithesis of good order and economy and spawns every other kind of indiscipline.

A few years ago, facing this situation as an urban political representative, I approached the prime minister to declare most of central Kingston as an area to be designated for tenure adjustment. It is to his credit that he quickly agreed. Since then with the considerable help of the commissioner of lands, the Survey Department, the Office of Titles and several private-sector professionals, close to 100 parcels of land, abandoned by previous owners, are in the process of having ownership vested in long-term occupants.

The first of these new titles have now been issued. The Government has advanced – not donated – some of the cost, and beneficiaries have contributed close to one-tenth of the value of the property they now own. Credit unions are prepared to finance this sum.

After this, owners can carry their collateral to the Housing Trust or a building society for a loan. They have an asset to show when applying for a visa, and something tangible to bequeath to their children. Of importance, they now are registered on the tax roll, can legitimately claim appropriate public services, and can stop ‘teef’ water and ‘throw-up’ light. In a small but hugely significant way, they have entered the formal economy, a status purposely denied most of us since slavery days. And they are not stealing or capturing. These are properties which have no identifiable or effective owner.

Most gratifying in this small experiment is the fact that most of the title applicants are single mothers. Now they have something that is theirs – their own key. No man can push their door unless they say “Come in, darling!” That is liberating. It is the base of a viable family. Stable relationships become more possible. That is progress.

Credit must be given to the Government, which has been regularising tenure in pockets of the countryside. Apart from homesteads, any hope of modernising agriculture requires settled tenure as a basis for credit. Norman Manley recognised this from the 1950s with the Facilities of Titles Act, appropriate then, outdated now. Operation Pride fell victim to abortion.

PROMOTE OWNERSHIP

The truth is that until recently, and even now, land laws in Jamaica were never designed to promote ownership by the majority of citizens. That was the same issue that motivated Bogle and Gordon and led to their murder. Uncertain tenure has colted the growth of a hardy peasantry from Emancipation till today.

Recent legislation and decided cases by our highest courts have begun to change this – but far too slowly for national needs. The process now bearing fruit in Parade Gardens has taken frustratingly long. Why, for example, does 60 years of undisturbed occupancy of so-called ‘Crown’ lands have to elapse before adverse possession can apply?

The specialised services of surveying, valuation and the paperwork involved can be simplified and made less expensive. The next frontier for legal aid, which began in 1972, is to expand the issuance of land titles nationwide.

Back to the towns and cities to complete the point. Can we imagine what could and should happen if the Housing Trust, rather than becoming another instance of the working class providing cheap capital to the rapacious financial sector, were to issue small loans to title holders in hitherto depressed communities at one per cent over 40 years, with a monthly repayment of, say, ten grand, strictly enforced?

That extra bedroom for the children or elderly to have privacy, dignity and safety; that bathroom to prevent the embarrassment of sharing with 15 others; that repaired roof to avoid water damage to irreplaceable and probably not-yet-paid-for furniture? No doubt, fewer fires.

That’s progress which gives birth to hope and effort. Those spiritual and materially related sentiments give rise to improved trust and faith in community, government and nation. Accelerating titled access to land and all that follows lies within our grasp now. Bulldozing dwellings, mashing up lives and masquerading repression as progress are not the answer. Correcting informality is.

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.