I finally managed to get mqttitude working.
I discovered that the mqttitude.conf must be cached somewhere since even if I removed the file and restarted OpenHab it was discovered and used to configure the home location and radius.
So I readded the configuration file and replaced keys with empty values. When I did that mqttitude did reconfigure properly.
It logged the following message that confirms the reconfiguration:
17:03:39.623 [DEBUG] [.mqttitude.internal.MqttitudeBinding] - Mqttitude binding configuration updated, no 'home' location specified. All item bindings must be configured with a <region>.
Maybe @Max_G should give it a try if it can help out with regards to https://community.openhab.org/t/oh1-owntracks-not-getting-anywhere/20450/12