Bodden Town Affordable Homes
MM writes: More than two hundred applications were received by the National Housing & Development Trust when the Bodden Town Affordable Housing scheme began accepting applications for the anticipated completion of the two- and three-bedroom homes. That is, more than two hundred Caymanian families with the dream of homeownership that they could afford.
The twenty homes were completed in August 2013, and as of today, some three years later, the homes remain vacant and the sixteen applicants who were successful with financing have still not hung their coat in their allocated home.
Homeownership provides a great sense of security and accomplishment, two things that can feel far-fetched for many in our community faced with lower incomes and other disadvantageous financial burdens.
When passing the homes this week, having been viewing properties in the area, it was difficult not to take note of the empty, shuttered homes lining the development when driving by. Two of the homes have been occupied by families stationed there due to whatever reason, but it begs to question why, three years later, the development is still very abandoned, despite the obvious desperate need for affordable homes.
Why has this project not been a priority to complete and scratch from the list of good things to do for the common people?
Somehow our successive governments manage to filter through multiple bills, approve numerous million dollar planning projects, give away millions of dollars in duty concessions to billionaires and export hundreds of thousands to other countries, while spending a million on Cuban repatriation, losing a billion here and there and paying out millions per year in salaries to ex-civil servants who are suspended for excessive periods of time whilst vacationing on full monthly salary and benefits for crimes against their people.
And yet, for one reason or the other, no one seems capable of finalising sixteen pre-approved financing applications and moving sixteen eager low-income families in to their new home within these past three years.
Funnily enough, statements released to the press by the NHDT within the past eighteen months have indicated that the process had begun with preparing the successful applicants for ‘move-in’ day; but nothing has happened. There have been three occasions (that we know about) that the government has pinned as the official month of occupancy; and yet here we are, with twenty perfectly livable properties sitting vacant during a time when homeownership is slipping between the fingers of many persons within the Caymanian community.
In the first instance the homes sat vacant because they were awaiting approval of an easement. This approval was granted and the Trust had intentions to allow occupants as of June 2014. But what has happened?
With so much time elapsing, one can only imagine many of these families have sought alternative properties if budget would allow or have simply given up. It is just difficult to understand why is it, when the homes are there for the selling and the demand is there for the buying, that this has not been a matter that someone in government put action to and get done. How can it have been so difficult and what has hindered the process so greatly when it is of such value?
There is simply no excuse to allow sixteen homes to sit vacant for three years. The government is the granter of building permits and approver of processes. What possible excuse can there be for not allowing the completion of sale to families and individuals who need this opportunity?
What does it take for our officials to truly understand the yearnings of their respective communities and people, and to pull their heads out of the clouds and take a panoramic view of their islands and the challenges of the civilians?
If, after three years, it has not weighed on the mind of even one official within our government to progress a project as important as the Affordable Housing Scheme but they are able to sit all day deliberating foreign information exchange policies and Dart planning permits, then it is high time the people casting the votes sit back and understand the true priorities of our sitting members.
Awkwardly enough, should this neighborhood be completely occupied in May 2017, it would be the first stop in Bodden Town for every running Bodden Town candidate.
Category: Viewpoint
I have always found it somewhat ironic that the CIG frequently calls its plans “schemes”; I was born in the U.S. My parents and theirs were born here. In the U.S. the word “scheme” often refers to a shady deal. Mirriam-Webster’s definition is “a clever and often dishonest plan to get or do something.”
SMH.
The irony is that you dont know the difference between the verb and the noun!
Poor you; you couldn’t tell my definition was in the tense of a noun. Bless your heart.
I suggest you resign from the Grammar Police if you use phrases such as “in the tense of a noun”. Just to help you, from the OED: “tense: a set of forms taken by a verb to indicate the time (and sometimes also the continuance or completeness) of the action in relation to the time of the utterance”. Note the important word there was “verb”.
PS: Contractions. Do not use them other than when quoting speech. It really is poor form.
Thanks. That’s really important information. ….. and … Don’t worry, I’ll always lean on contractions when I’m being unnecessarily attacked for stating my opinion.
I believe your place in the Grammar Police is well met; I have no such aspirations. Hopefully you don’t have difficulties with semicolons as well. Don’t worry; every’ting g’wan be allright.
Good to note your ego was too large to admit your error. Your smug, snide and ignorant comment on grammar was being criticised, not your “opinion”. I would query the appropriateness of your second semi-colon . . .
British Territory. British dictionaries. Oxford English preferred. Scheme: “An estate of social housing”
But what about poor Miss Cayman ?
You’re joking aren’t you? Cayman is a British territory yes, but that’s where the similarity ends. Case in point: gas station; pants; chips; fries; math; mall, the list is endless. And check the Oxford dictionary again – its covers ‘scheme’ as described by the previous poster too and has the same meaning in the UK as that poster referred to within the states.
Trivialities aside the main poster has a good point, and its a shame so many genuine attempts at discussion here on CNS end up being hijacked by the Spelling Police or racists rants.
Isn’t this another proof positive that the CIG should not be allowed full reigns on their fiscal policies…and not an expat in sight to blame as usually the case for all that ails Cayman.
Oh, I am sure there is some Caymanian at this very moment trying to figure out which expat’s fault this is.
As a young Caymanian who had to shake the chains of brainwashing against our expat community and venture out to seek my own opinion through research and constant rummaging through blurred facts, heated conversations, lying political reporting, gossip from ill-informed family members and influential adults amidst the other unreliable “information stations” within a young Caymanian’s circle; I have grown to realize that what we have at the moment is a generation who has been raised on the daily digestion of the anti-expat story without knowing our history or the way the importation of labor and more experienced members of the population from varying countries has contributed to the development and advancement of our community.
It is the Government’s responsibility to enact and enforce laws to protect our people from exploitation, discrimination and exclusion, it is NOT the responsibility of a foreign worker/individual to turn down any opportunity they receive or are able to receive in this country or any other in the interest of a native. Our own people do not even turn down opportunities that may cause detriment to their own families and friends much less requesting it of a stranger!
Look at what our own Caymanians have done to us recently? Exploiting money from our health service provider!! That is like stealing from the sick, elderly and needy to line your own pocket! But we want people to refuse to seek work here because our unemployment rate is sky-rocketing (despite efforts to hide true figures and data – our Government’s only talent is cover-ups). Gambling away public money in high-life casinos, Immigration Chief breaking the laws for her own personal businesses/gain, doctors still at work and seeing patients after obvious and life-threatening negligence…
Our Caymanians are certainly buying a lot of UK-bound airline tickets and working their way over there to get benefits and I do not hear any Brits complaining about them soaking up government benefits when arriving on the UK passport with Cayman birth certificates – a benefit provided to us only by ties with the mother country! The same UK that our pea-brained politicians enjoy provoking, blaming and scandalizing in order to keep our people’s focus squarely off of their abuse of office, abuse of policy, lack of knowledge and obvious disinterest in truly affecting positive change for their own people!
I am appalled, it just keeps getting worst. Hawking at nats and swallowing salmon (or however the saying goes)!
Straining at gnats and swallowing camels, but we get you.
That works, thanks 🙂
Well said.
MM, I hereby nominate your comment as “Top Comment for 2016”!
You can blame the rapidly expanding Mac Jamaicans who are sucking dry the social services and housing….they’re expats too right…?
This is the best they can do. If the people of Cayman want better they need to start hiring (voting for) the new crop of educated young Caymanians instead of the old tired, and incompetent ones. Same old lazy entitled guys, same old way of screwing things up and then covering it up. Year after year.
Yes, only in Cayman, and only in Cayman where two firefighters committing a heinous act are rewarded with two years holiday on full pay and still have their jobs.The price we all pay for putting Caymanians in charge.
Since when is buying a home some kind of entitlement for those that cannot afford the market price?
affordable housing for those who obviously cannot afford home ownership???
look at the history of the other schemes….absolute failure…..
just another day in wonderland…..
People need to start being kind to one another. This is just plain mean. It just needs the stroke of a pen. Now, who owns that pen?
To borrow from another commenter: Only in Absurdistan!
Odd isn’t it that the same campaigners who want to protect homeowners who cannot pay mortgages they cannot afford want to have homes available to people who cannot afford homes. Home ownership is not a right, any more than there is a right to own a car or a boat. Yes, the state should ensure that its population are housed, but that is an entirely different issue.
There is clearly something – political, probably – that we don’t know, that is preventing these homes being occupied. It never ceases to amaze how spineless successive governments are. It’s almost as though there is a great big, fat secret that you are only let in on when you’ve secured enough votes to be a MLA, and whatever that secret is, it’s enough to stop you from doing what you know needs to be done.