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A national call for wanted individuals to voluntarily surrender to Dominican authorities has yielded four new surrenders this weekend, including two teen suspects linked to the armed robbery of an active-duty army soldier, pushing the total number of people who have turned themselves in to 29 since President Luis Abinader launched the appeal last month. The push for voluntary surrender comes as Dominican law enforcement launched a major transparency and public safety initiative, rolling out a new centralized public database listing more than 50,000 people with active outstanding arrest warrants across the country.

Abinader first announced the appeal during his weekly televised address “La Agenda Semanal” on September 28, making a direct appeal to all people against whom active arrest warrants had been issued to turn themselves in peacefully before law enforcement launched a proactive, widespread manhunt. “Those who have arrest warrants should turn themselves in, because if they don’t, they will be sought before they commit another crime,” the president stated, framing the appeal as a proactive measure to prevent additional violent and criminal harm to Dominican communities.

Four new surrenders were recorded over the weekend, joining 25 people who had already turned themselves in by the end of last week. All 29 surrenders are counted among the 107 voluntary handovers recorded nationwide across the entire month of September, according to official National Police data.

The most high-profile adult surrender of the weekend was Eduardo Antonio de la Cruz Gabriel, a 27-year-old suspect better known by his alias “Niño Cuboy,” who turned himself in to National Police agents in response to an active warrant for his alleged role in an aggravated robbery and assault that took place in La Vega province. Court order number 2026-AJ-0085746, issued by the Judicial Office of Permanent Attention Services for the La Vega Judicial District, was active for de la Cruz Gabriel at the time of his surrender.

A second adult suspect, Wilson Gabriel Hilario Arias, who goes by the alias “El Lápiz,” surrendered to agents from the Criminal Investigation Department (commonly known by its Spanish acronym DICRIM) following negotiations led by local community leader and attorney Juan “Guanchy” Comprés. Hilario Arias is accused of involvement in a plot to carry out an attempted robbery of a lottery bank in the Jenny María community.

The two remaining weekend surrenders were 17-year-old minors, accused of taking part in a high-profile public robbery of a sergeant major from the Dominican Republic Army (ERD) in the Mendoza sector of eastern Santo Domingo. National Police confirmed via their official X (formerly Twitter) account that the soldier was assaulted and stripped of his service weapon during the attack, which was recorded on video and widely circulated across social media platforms. The two teens were turned over voluntarily to DICRIM’s Housing Investigation Section by a responsible adult, who also handed over the stolen .38-caliber service revolver (serial number 931194) as well as the clothing the suspects are believed to have worn during the robbery.

Shortly after President Abinader’s announcement, the National Police unveiled its updated centralized database of all outstanding arrest warrants on September 24. The database catalogs a total of 3,877 active warrants targeting 50,865 unique individuals, sorted into 31 distinct criminal categories. National Police spokesperson Diego Pesqueira explained that the discrepancy between the number of warrants and number of individuals stems from the fact that many wanted people have multiple active warrants outstanding against them for different offenses.

Breaking down the data by offense type, the largest share of active warrants – 17,635, or 32.7% of all outstanding orders – are linked to cases of domestic violence. Robbery is the next most common offense, with 11,587 active warrants, followed by physical assault (5,951 warrants), sexual assault (4,018), cybercrime (2,761), and homicide (2,548). Of the 2,548 active homicide warrants, law enforcement officials note that 1,367 of the targeted suspects lack official government identity records, while 1,181 have fully documented identity cards and publicly available photographs listed in the database.

Following the latest round of weekend surrenders, the National Police has reiterated its original call for all remaining wanted individuals to use available official channels to turn themselves in voluntarily, and take responsibility for the alleged offenses listed in their active warrants.

Santo Domingo’s historic Colonial City has marked a major milestone in community-focused heritage and infrastructure improvement, as Dominican Republic Tourism Minister David Collado has officially launched and delivered the first wave of completed works across three interconnected urban revitalization programs, backed by multilateral international funding.

The flagship initiative, the Colonial City Housing Improvement Program (known locally by its Spanish acronym Promevi), was originally designed to deliver 38 fully renovated residential units. Following pre-construction technical assessments that identified six additional properties with critical structural damage, project officials expanded the first batch to 44 completed homes, with a total investment of more than 71 million Dominican pesos. When fully rolled out, the program will deliver comprehensive renovations to 140 low-income homes across five Colonial City communities: San Antón, Santa Bárbara, San Miguel, San Lázaro, and the city’s southern zone.

Unlike generic construction projects, Promevi prioritizes vulnerable and marginalized residents: the program specifically targets women heading single-parent households, elderly residents, and people living with disabilities. Renovation works span full overhauls of core home systems: contractors rebuild outdated bathrooms and kitchens, repair failing roofs, resolve chronic water leaks, update aging electrical and plumbing infrastructure, replace deteriorated doors and windows, apply waterproofing treatments, complete interior and exterior painting, and add structural reinforcement where required. To align with global climate resilience goals, all renovations comply with EDGE environmental certification standards, integrating mandatory requirements for energy efficiency, water conservation, and improved resistance to climate-related hazards. The program’s funding comes from a combination of a non-refundable grant from the European Union and targeted financing from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

Alongside the handover of renovated homes, Minister Collado inaugurated the first 60 restored building facades under the city’s broader Facade Recovery Program, a initiative backed by 62 million pesos in investment. This program has an end goal of restoring 120 historic residential and commercial facades to return the Colonial City’s unique architectural heritage to its original grandeur. Work on each facade includes careful restoration of original plasterwork and decorative architectural details, repair of structural cracks and holes, matching repainting, refurbishment of original wood carpentry and iron architectural elements, and repairs to roof sections connected to the restored facades.

The third completed initiative, the Paint Your City Project (Pinta tu Ciudad in Spanish), has been delivered in full, with all 150 planned facades refurbished at a total cost of more than 16 million pesos. This project focused on surface-level beautification of the historic center’s urban landscape, boosting the property value of heritage buildings by addressing visible deterioration. Works for this project included deep cleaning of exterior surfaces, removal of flaking and deteriorated paint, and sealing of cracks, holes, and other surface imperfections on walls, benefiting both residential and commercial property owners.

All three programs fall under the scope of the Comprehensive Tourism and Urban Development Program of the Colonial City of Santo Domingo (PIDTUCCSD), which is led by the Ministry of Tourism in close coordination with the Ministry of Culture and the Mayor’s Office of the National District. In remarks following the delivery of the completed projects, Minister Collado emphasized that these investments deliver more than just architectural improvements—they directly improve daily life for long-term residents of the historic district. “Programs like these, which we have begun to implement, have a direct and positive impact on people and their quality of life,” Collado said. A core stated goal of the full initiative is to preserve the Colonial City’s traditional resident community, preventing displacement of low-income long-term inhabitants as heritage tourism development expands in the historic center.

A new global study from non-governmental organization Habitat for Humanity has exposed the crippling impact of unaffordable housing across Latin America and the Caribbean, revealing that 75 percent of people in the region are forced to slash essential spending, dip into life savings, or take on extra work to cover their housing-related expenses.

Titled *A Home, but at what cost?*, the research paints a grim picture of systemic barriers to safe, affordable housing in the region, layered on top of deep structural challenges that include widespread informal employment, a persistent qualitative housing deficit, and systemic obstacles to accessing affordable mortgage or rental financing. The full global iteration of the study draws on survey responses from more than 30,000 people across 22 nations, tracking how households adjust their budgets to accommodate rising housing costs. Its regional findings show that one in three respondents have cut back on food spending to pay for housing, nearly a third have drained savings or emergency funds to cover costs, and 13 percent have postponed or skipped necessary medical care entirely to meet rent or mortgage payments.

Unlike many higher-income regions, the housing crisis in Latin America and the Caribbean is rooted in long-standing structural deficits that exacerbate affordability pressures. Ernesto Castro, Area Vice President for Habitat for Humanity in Latin America and the Caribbean, explained in an interview with EFE that more than 40 percent of the region’s population is impacted by inadequate housing conditions. Around 120 million people currently reside in unplanned informal settlements, and more than 78 percent of the region’s working population holds informal jobs, which do not qualify them for formal housing financing. This creates a cycle of double exclusion, Castro noted: low-income households lack the upfront resources to purchase or even rent formal housing, and their informal employment status blocks them from accessing the loans that would help them secure stable accommodation.

The financial pressure of sky-high housing costs is not just a day-to-day burden—it is reshaping major long-term life decisions for millions of people across the region. The study found that 56 percent of regional respondents say housing costs make it impossible for them to seriously consider starting a family, a share that jumps to 62 percent among Gen Z and millennial respondents, who are already facing broader economic instability in the post-pandemic era.

Castro added that the region’s housing deficit is primarily a qualitative one, meaning millions of households have some form of shelter but it lacks basic infrastructure, is built from substandard materials, or fails to meet basic safety standards. Beyond the core affordability crisis, four additional gaps worsen outcomes: poor urban location that separates households from work and services, high vulnerability to climate-linked disasters, and weak institutional frameworks that fail to regulate housing markets or expand access to affordable units.

With more than 80 percent of the region’s population now living in urban or peri-urban areas, rising housing costs in city centers have pushed low- and middle-income families to settle on the far peripheries of metropolitan areas. This relocation adds extra financial and time burdens, as families face longer commutes to work and higher transportation costs that eat further into already stretched budgets. The region is also disproportionately exposed to climate disasters: between 2000 and 2022, extreme weather events impacted roughly 190 million people across Latin America and the Caribbean, destroying thousands of unregulated, substandard informal homes every year.

Regional survey data collected across six countries—Argentina, Barbados, Brazil, Guatemala, Mexico, and Trinidad and Tobago—reinforces these safety concerns: 74 percent of respondents agreed that a large share of the regional population lives in structurally unsafe buildings, and 18 percent reported their own homes do not adequately protect them from extreme temperatures or flooding.

Castro argues that a large part of the ongoing crisis stems from flawed public policy design. Current housing subsidy frameworks often set strict income eligibility thresholds that leave a large gap: many households earn too much to qualify for public housing subsidies, but still do not have enough steady income to qualify for formal private sector housing loans. To address this gap, Castro is calling for policymakers to revise eligibility criteria, allowing households to qualify for support regardless of whether their income comes from formal or informal employment, a change that would open up affordable housing access to millions of currently excluded working families.