The government is seeking to acquire land in the inner city areas to develop housing options for Bahamians.
Minister of Housing and Urban Renewal, the Hon. Keith Bell explained, “so what is means is that where properties are sitting in a number of areas, a number of them have derelict buildings, a number of them have old vehicles. The best example I can think of right now is through Rupert Dean Lane. If you go through Rupert Dean Lane take the first corner on the right off Poinciana it’s called Pratt’s Alley. It’s about a acre of property in there but it’s littered with a number of derelict vehicles, abandoned vehicles, and abandoned buildings at the end. We’re looking to compulsory acquire that tract of land and I can say we can put about ten homes inside there.”
The minister also explained the circumstances that led to the properties being abandoned. He said, “in many of these areas we have persons who may have died, they may not have had a will or they may not have had an offspring so the property just sits there. And so the properties now have resulted in the areas become depraved. We see a lot of social decay where persons are now using the properties for dumping, for the storage of old vehicles, a number of the buildings have had fires, they’ve been destroyed by fire and they’re just there in these inner city areas.”
Bell assured that landowners will be fully compensated. “We can’t just take somebody’s land and do not compensate them. And so they will be fully compensated for the property wherever we acquire. Once we do that, we then go in there and clean the property and we’d be able to then construct affordable housing for the population,” he said.
