The Tribune

By JADE RUSSELL

Tribune Staff Reporter

jrussell@tribunemedia.net

THE government’s latest push to demolish shanty town structures is sparking mixed reactions from Abaco residents — fear from those set to be displaced and cheers from those ready for the communities to be eliminated.

Kelly Baptiste, 22, hasn’t received an eviction notice, but she can’t help but wonder what will happen if people refuse to vacate their homes.

“We’re worried,” she said. “At the end of the day, this might get out of hand and people might end up dying. All of them (officers) with their big guns and they’re just bursting down people’s doors and going inside their houses and violating their rights?”

“They are carrying on like we’re not humans. Like if they got cut, they wouldn’t bleed red just like us. They think they are above us.”

The government posted 260 eviction notices in unregulated communities off SC Bootle Highway on Tuesday, according to a statement from the Unregulated Communities Action Taskforce. The move came a month after a Supreme Court judge lifted an injunction preventing shanty towns from being demolished.

Ms Baptiste said many of her friends received eviction notices but have nowhere to go.

“We don’t have anywhere in Haiti to go,” she said. “For us who was born over here, we will have to come up with some way for us to live. Because most of us over here still waiting to get our citizenship.”

Ms Baptiste, whose real name has been withheld because she fears reprisals, hopes officials won’t return to post notices on homes like hers, which she said existed before Hurricane Dorian damaged the island in 2019.

“If the houses that were here before Hurricane Dorian (are going to be demolished), if they say they are going to break them, I guess my sister and I will have to come up with a plan for our parents to find somewhere else to live,” she said.

Residents like Haitian national Ford Franzy, however, have limited sympathy for those whose homes may be demolished, saying they have had years to comply with the law.

“Some of them been living there 20 years and they knew it was coming (because) they are living illegally,” he said. “And the ones who are legal followed the laws.”

“There’s nothing I can do.”

Cay Mills, meanwhile, said the government should “break the foundation” of unregulated buildings in the shanty towns.

“They’re going at a snail’s pace,” he said.

“We’re not talking about breaking the buildings right now, but to show how serious they are, they’re supposed to be breaking those foundations down. You don’t have to break the building down if you stop the foundation.”

Mr Mills doesn’t believe some shanty town residents take eviction notices seriously, noting illegal structures are still being built.

“The government has to show aggressiveness just how the Haitians are aggressively building,” he said.

“I could go down there and take pictures of 40 structures that were going up while they are putting these notices on the wall.”