Squatters Posing A Problem

As the government moves ahead with its ambitious housing program to construct 3,000 new homes and service lots during its five year term in office, they are somewhat stumped as a number of squatters in certain areas simply refuse to move, according to Housing Minister Kenneth Russell.
Mr. Russell said as it now stands, the government has so far secured some 64 acres off Carmichael Road to build homes and should also acquire an additional 10 acres off Cowpen Road, four acres off Bacardi Road as well as acreage in Fox Hill.
He noted, however, that there are squatters residing on these parcels of land.

“All of these areas of course have people squatting on them. We have had a meeting already with these squatters and I got an agreement from them that we would be able to do our survey [of the land] in peace and once that survey is completed, we will seek to meet with them to work out a regularization process for them,” Mr. Russell said while touring homes under construction in the newly-developed Ardastra Gardens and Pride III estates on Monday.

“As I told them when we met, we are not going to run a bulldozer through their house. We will not destroy their belongings, but we will sit down, we will talk and come up with something that all of us can live with and once this is done, we will be well on our way in New Providence, Grand, Bahama, Exuma and San Salvador to produce the 3,000 service lots and houses in our first term in office.”

The Housing Minister also revealed that in some extreme cases, the government offered to assist with regularizing some squatters in the Pride Estates area.

“When that subdivision started there were quite a number of squatters living here and those squatters are being regularized one way or another,” Mr. Russell said, adding that there is an elderly lady who lives in the Pride Estates area with three invalids who are now getting assistance

“For some of them we are building a couple of smaller frame houses…And we are hoping that in regularizing them they would upgrade their homes to match what we have here in terms of probably stuccoing it, putting in proper bathrooms and getting authority to hook up the electricity and potable water.”

But the squatting issues faced by the Ministry of Housing are nothing new.

Former Minister Housing in the Progressive Liberal Party administration, Shane Gibson told the Journal Tuesday that squatting was also a serious problem when the former government began its housing program back in 2002.

Each case of squatting, he said, was examined to determine whether or not these persons would qualify for some type of assistance such as a land grant.

“We negotiated with these persons but we had some illegal immigrants, some migrants with work permits and some Bahamians, so each case we dealt with on its own merit and depending on the outcome we sat down and outlined our goals to them, but in all cases we were able to get them to move,” Mr. Gibson said.

The former housing minister also noted that if someone was squatting on a piece of land for a very long time and qualified for a government low-cost house, the former government worked out an agreement to build and finance a house for these individuals on the land, having the squatter pay for the infrastructure and the cost of construction.

He highlighted, however, that compromises were only offered to those squatters who were Bahamian citizens.

A total of 40 homes are currently being constructed by nine different contractors in Ardastra Gardens Estates on the 65 lot subdivision and five homes are almost completed.

A total of 66 homes are being constructed in Pride Estates, which houses a total of 117 lots.

And as shoddy workmanship has been an on-going complaint with many new homeowners, Mr. Russell said his ministry is ensuring that all homes are inspected at least once everyday.

“The inspector here at this [Ardastra Gardens’ location has already encountered some problems that was corrected to ensure that we don’t have the problems that we had before. The overall work and the overall camaraderie between the inspectors, the staff from the ministry and the contractors here on site is positive and I believe that we would end up with a very good product here at Ardastra Estates,” Mr. Russell said.