US consultants working on draft housing policy
(CNS): Public Works LLC, the US-based consultants contracted by the UPM government to draft the Cayman Islands’ first housing policy, has begun work on that document, according to ministry officials. Since winning the CI$276,750 contract last October, the consultants have carried out a public consultation, including an online survey, and met with stakeholders and focus groups. According to the Ministry of Planning, Agriculture, Housing, Infrastructure, Transport and Development (PAHITD), the feedback gathered during the last few five months will be taken into consideration.
Once the policy is drafted, it will be presented to the Cabinet for review. The consultants will then conduct a public presentation of the final policy and plan.
The government’s attempts to resolve the significant housing crisis in the Cayman Islands began during the PACT administration after a cross-ministerial task force was established to examine the issues and come up with resolutions. So far very little has been done to address the myriad problems the shortage of affordable property is causing.
Over the last decade, development on Grand Cayman has focused almost exclusively on high-end luxury accommodation, largely to appeal to the luxury tourism business or wealthy individuals wanting to use property here to bank their money. This has not only been detrimental to the environment, but has also priced many local residents out of the housing market.
At the same time, many local property owners have removed their rental units from the long-term domestic market and switched to the more lucrative business of renting to visitors through platforms like Airbnb, resulting a massive drop in available long-term rental accommodation and pushing up prices to unprecedented level.
This has happened just as the population reaches historic highs, fuelled largely by low-paid expatriate workers on permits who are forced into overcrowded, cramped rooms and dormitories where workers are even sharing beds in Dickensian conditions.
The government’s task force produced a report that was approved by Cabinet but has never been made public. CNS made an FOI request for it on 26 March and we are still waiting to find out if the requested document will be released as the Cabinet Office, which holds it, requested a 30 day extension. This extension period expired three weeks ago.
Whether or not the findings in that report are influencing this proposed policy remains to be seen. But with around nine months to go before parliament is prorogued to pave the way for the general election campaign, the people of Cayman are unlikely to see any significant movement towards addressing the crisis before that national vote.
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Category: Local News, Policy, Politics
The Cayman Islands Ministry asks people to weigh in on PlanCayman, again
It would really be nice if we could provide Affordable homes, condos or apartments for Caymanians
https://caymannewsservice.com/2023/12/ministry-asks-people-to-weigh-in-on-plancayman-again/
A few months ago, American Broadcasting CBS News Media published news that almost 50% of Americans cannot afford a $400 suprise medical or automobile exoence
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nearly-40-of-americans-cant-cover-a-surprise-400-expense/
Resulting in one of the worlds leading automobile companies “Ford Motor Company” announcing Ford Trucks for $8,000 at a significant reduced cost
https://youtu.be/UnEv9f9lVbU?si=6F7OeWs_wiuDuPRD
Suggesting that large companies like Ford Motor Company are also experiencing financial strains and difficulties with possible reduced sales because almost 50% of Americans cannot afford new vehicles and as a result have had to re-think and evaluate the affordability and sale of there vehicles
In the Cayman Islands, suggestions was made to re-development Dog City and the condemed Randyke Gardens Apartments, in-addition to the Affordable Housing property that was built next to the Cox Lumber Store by Dog City where the first Affordable Homes were initially built, that could be re-developed possibly knocking down the existing homes and building Multi-Store Apartments or Condo complexes on multiple floors to provide existing home owners and there families an apartment or condo and selling the other affordable apartments or condos to low and middle income Caymanians to repay the cost to build them
New Multi-Store Affordable Apartments or Condos could have a pool or pools and possibly other amenities like:
A Gym
Net Ball Courts
Basketball Courts
Squash Room(s)
5-A Side Football
Monthly Strata Payments are part of the expenses in owning an Apartment or Condo and so is Building(s) and Yard Maintance, in-addition to Home and Life Insurance
Home and Life Insurance is a bank requirement for a bank mortgage and are usually included and paid monthly by making Monthly Strata Payments
If Cayman Islands Government Builders & Developers “PWD” Public Works Department, “CINICO” Cayman Islands National Insurance Company & the “CIDB” Cayman Islands Development Bank could engage themselves into a mutual agreement to build Affordable Apartments/Condos for Caymanians at cost, that would only include the cost of building materials and labor, eliminating the regulor construction contractors builders profits; and selling these apartments or condos at the building cost, hundreds of Caymanians would be able to own there own home, apartment or condo with a viriety of sporting athletic activities, an Affordable Day Care Center(s) with an after school home work Child Care Center
These Multi-Store Affordable Apartments / Condos could be built in each district in the Cayman Islands of:
George Town
Bodden Town
North Side
East End
West Bay &
Cayman Brac
for low and middle income Caymanians earning less than $2,000 or $3,000 per month
These Multi-Family Affordable Apartments / Condos could also include a covered seating Food Court(s) like what is in the US Malls with Multiple Food Vendors selling local food like Turtle, Oxtail, Conch etc…. to Chicken n Chips and Jerk Chicken for Caymanian families may have a comfortable mixed use living development to live in
A proper Day Care and an After School Home Work Child Care Study Area/Center ran by our government with three or four retired teachers that could assist or help Kids-At-Risk or our At-Risk-Youth
Single Parent(s)
Affordable Studio One Bedroom Apartments / Condos built by our Government Developers PWD, CINICO & CIDB and sold at the building cost of materials and labor only
One Bed Room / Two Baths
400□
Kitchen / Dining & Living
400□
20′ * 40′ = 800□ @ $85□
40 yr Mortgage – $68,000
Interest Rate 6%
Appx Monthly Pmt $425
Monthly Strata appx $300
Single Parent(s)
Two Bedroom Apartments / Condos built by our Government Developers PWD, CINICO & CIDB and sold at the building cost of materials and labor
Two Bed Room / Two Baths
525□
Kitchen / Dining & Living
525□
35′ * 30′ = 1050□ @ $85□
40 yr Mortgage – $89,250
Interest Rate 6%
Appx Monthly Pmt $471
Monthly Strata appx $300
In-addition to proper After School Programs in each Multi-Family Complex could also offer Summer & Christmas Child Care Programs with PWD Maintaince Staff providing a Public/Private Partnership with the Government to maintain the apartments or condo premises
Only Caymanians should be allowed to own more than one property. At least keeps some wealth in the local community.
I remember the 70’s when there was no AirBnB and condos on Seven Mile Beach could be purchased for less than $100K.
Back then there were less than 4,000 foreigners living here and/or looking a place to rent or purchase.
I hate to say this, but I’m probably closer to being able to get a condo on Seven Mile Beach today, if that was my dream, than I was back then when I had many years ahead of me to pay off a loan but no bank willing to give me one.
Banning AirBnB and foreign ownership will not solve the problem, and I’m sure an economist can explain that far better than I can.
However, cutting off or severely restricting the revenue that government gets from AirBnB tax and property tranfer tax, from a succession of governments that have proven abilities to spend more that government makes every year could very well end up bringing Cayman to its knees and making people willing to sell their houses/condos for whatever they can get for them.
So if you want to purchase a home or condo really cheap, be careful what you wish for.
Short term rentals are a plague upon the world. Most everywhere with this plague has began to curb or eliminate it.
It kills affordable housing.
Perfect, let’s learn how to build American style ghettos
civilized countries like bermuda have laws to prevent entities/billionaires taking over their country?! they can own x% and no more…i guess we aint corrupted…so that cant happen here.. lol
According to the KPMG Bermuda Budget Snapshot for 2023-24, government interest-bearing debt stands at $3.29 billion. Let’s fast forward through Bermuda’s significant debt history over the past 20-plus years. In 2000, under the first Progressive Labour Party administration, our debt — net of the sinking fund — stood at about $139 million. By 2004, that number had been reduced to $117 million by the finance minister, Eugene Cox. During the years from 2004 to 2023, various finance ministers strolled out to the markets and borrowed what is now the present total of $3.29 billion.
Good example Bermuda. Everything is great there and all of the young people have their own homes. Not!
Bermuda..?
You mean that place in the middle of the Atlantic that pretends to be a Caribbean Island.?
These comments spell doom.
Doom? Affordable housing market was doomed after Ivan and foreign investors descended upon the islands.
I can feel the downvotes coming but I’m going to say it anyway and if it’s a hard truth to swallow then so be it:
There is no restriction on foreign ownership, or AirBNB, or change to the point system etc that will create meaningful reductions in house prices WITHOUT adversely affecting MANY Caymanians.
Think about it for a second, the market doesn’t just work on one property at a time; if you change something to crash the price of housing on SMB by say 20% or 30% or whatever, it will also crash the value of housing in Savanah, and Prospect, and East End. So your parents who’ve had their house forever and built up a decent amount of equity in it are going to lose that value.
You cannot decouple the market. So those changes would hurt every existing Caymanian homeowner by the same amount that it would help a prospective Caymanian home-buyer. Guess which of those groups is bigger? Go ask 100 existing Caymanian homeowners if they are willing to take a 20-40% hit to their own property just so priced-out buyers can buy something? 99 of them at least will say “NO”.
Another point is that a lot of Caymanians over many years have been renting their ‘2nd home’ to short-stay even before Air B&B ‘disrupted’ that market. So any attack on the short-term rental market is an attack by big businesses on the smaller Caymanian trying to get a small piece of the tourism pie. And as more Caymanians were born (or otherwise made) and as more of us achieved economic success and could afford that ‘beach cottage’ more of us put it in the short-term rental market to pay for the weekends we can use it ourselves. As you said, decoupling these issues is complicated if we don’t ant to hurt ourselves in the process.
Sounds like a greed problem then. I think you’re missing the bigger picture here. People are struggling just to have the ability to call themself a “homeowner”
Go ask 100 existing Caymanian non homeowners if they care if grandmas house takes a 20-40% hit so we can buy something. 99 of them at least will say “Yes”
-A working Caymanian that wasn’t conceived when land sold for $5000 Kyd
Ok well that says a lot about you and looking after your grandparents interests. It’s also more complicated than anyone on your side of the fence wants to make it.
If an existing homeowner buys a house for $500,000 with $50,000 down and a loan of $450000….and then you get your way and correct prices by 20-30% that home could lose value down to $350,000 and be underwater by 100k. If banks decide you do t have enough collateral they will do a cash call and when you can’t cover it there goes your house.
Nobody on earth with a brain wants a 20-30% housing correction…because there is no way to correct housing value by that much without crashing the economy as a whole by a similar amount. Then you will have all the unemployment and wage stagnation that comes with it.
Save you money, keep learning, get on the property ladder however you can and do not ever aim for a 20-30% crash. That’s just friggin stupidity
That is incorrect on every level. Unless you intend to downsize, speculate or take out a bigger mortgage on your equity, rising house prices are irrelevant because you have to live somewhere! Rising property prices are a boom to non Caymanians because they make a tax free win when they leave the island or sell off parts of their Cayman property empire. High property prices do not benefit first time Caymanian home buyers or existing Caymanian home owners.
Ok well it’s very very common that people downsize as they get older. When they’re young and have kids they have a big house. Then kids move out, mom and dad retire and buy something smaller.
This might be the dumbest thing I’ve read ever. “Rising home prices do not benefit first time buyers or existing buyers”????
Of course it does. If you own a home why the hell would you not want it to go up in value? You want to pay interest and be in debt for a depreciating asset?
Nobody on earth that owns a home wants it going down in value. And everyone that buys their first home wants it to skyrocket the second they close on it.
Go back to school and try again. SMH
Wrong.
Ban second home ownership for non Caymanians. You need a work permit for ever other profession. Why is property speculation and rental any different.
Why an American Consiltant Company? Bermudian consultants could have done a much better job.
Several local companies bid on this project and would have done a better job.
Time for trailer parks
we already have the trailer park trash so should be easy.
A report is always put in place as a way to make the current government look as they are trying to solve the issue.
It has never worked though.
Once completed, the report will be ignored. Just like all of the other reports that came before it.
Put a value limit on what non-Caymanians are allowed to buy. Stop using property as a way to gain points for PR. Stop making it so easy for non-Caymanians to purchase property here. How many times must the same thing be said over and over?
Consultants are always hired for Government projects. What are we paying senior civil servants for? To hire consultants to do their jobs??!!
Waiting on another F*cking report.
Housing is a major issue hurting Caymanians and non-Caymanians living here. The past 3 Governments FAILED to protect Caymanians and this one in particular has allowed the housing crisis to get worse.
According to the published Cabinet Meeting Summary for the meeting of Tuesday, 24 October 2023 Cabinet
**Approved the Report entitled “Technical Working Group of the Inter-Ministerial Housing Taskforce: 27 Policy Recommendations/Options” and to undertake the actioning of the 27 recommendations listed in the Report.**
What were the 27 recommendations?
What progress has been made?
Time for a Government scorecard to hold these self centered, self serving, bought and paid for stooges accountable.
Ban AirBnBs. Let housing be for people to live in and not for investment vehicles for outside money.
If amended to ban non-Caymanian AirBnBs, then I’m in complete agreement. It is fine for foreigners to come here and buy or build a place. I don’t think they should be allowed to be absentee landlords.
Also, stop the frenetic overbuilding of hotels! Caymanians workers don’t build them, and Caymanian workers don’t provide hospitality services for them. Every new hotel is another several hundred expat underpaid employee that needs housing. THIS is the answer to the “housing crisis”.
With a record number of hotel rooms now available, why is the CIG allowing the airbnb and venmo abuse to continue? This is one of the main causes of the housing shortage that has resulting in the skyrocketing of housing prices. All major cities including NY have been introducing regulations to stop this madness.
privatize profits, socialize costs….
Of course, Count Sultants!
Between Ministers, Chief Officers, DCOs, Strategy Officers, Cabinet Policy Officers etc..
and hundreds of local developers. architects and planners…
only Con Sultants can tell us what we need!?
Until a moratorium is placed on non-Caymanian investors-developers as well as one on Air B&B-VRBO-Short Term Rentals, nothing will fundamentally change no matter how many reports are undertaken.
The Dickensian conditions are unlawful. If our Immigration (Transition) Act (s. 58(3)(f)) were being followed, let alone enforced, no such issue would arise.
Our problems, almost all of them, are a direct result of our refusal to enforce our own laws.
another report to be ignored….
How many recommendations of the miller-shaw or ernst & young reports have been implemented?
So we spend a quarter of a million dollars to find out our rental rates are too high. The plan was to bring the Residential Tenancies Act into force but they rescinded such plan. Hey why make things easier for the poor? They drive around $100000 Tahoes, increase salaries for their friends, employ under qualified people, drain our Treasury….I can go on.
The first paragraph has already been written. 50 new houses will be built in Cayman Brac to house the workers who will build 100 new houses. Mortgage payments will capped at 25% of the monthly NAU stipend. This pattern will then be adopted for North Side and West Bay. Depending on the outcome of elections, it might be further expanded.
psst….they the problem! why they allow the rich/billionaires buy up most land and hoarding it up…as they leasing..not selling…ZZZZZZ
Who sold it to them?