By Alric Lindsay
In a July 25 sitting of the Parliament, Minister of Tourism Kenneth Bryan doubled down on his support for constructing the East-West Arterial Road, suggesting that it will increase the supply of land available to Caymanians and make land prices more affordable. He contrasted this with what he implies as environmentalist efforts to restrict the supply of land (or where people can build), which he indicates may increase land prices as demand escalates within an environment with a limited supply of land. According to Bryan, opening up more roads and providing more land access could be a game-changer for Caymanians.
Explaining the background of his position, Bryan said:
I think that easily homeownership and property ownership is within the top ten issues within the Cayman Islands.
I’ve started my campaign officially and I’ve already started doing my surveying and that’s already started to be in the top five and I dare say I think it’s going to end up being the third or second based on the events that they’re coming in.
He added:
I’m not surprised by that, Mister speaker, and hence the reason I’ve been such an advocate for the continuation and the development of the East-West Arterial.
You see, when it comes to property ownership, you may be hearing me talking about roads, but it’s not because of the road, but because of the availability to land.
I believe in the simple principles of supply and demand.
And right now, the availability of land and property to be developed is only based on the land that have roads to it.
So, hypothetically speaking, if our land mass was 100%, we may really only have access to about 30% of the land in the Cayman Islands.
And if I go back to the principles of supply and demand, if you increase the supply of something, you bring down the prices.
He continued:
What we’ve been doing is not allowing the proper road development to happen in areas where land is available potentially for development to proceed and doing which would help with the situation, but rather what we’re doing is allowing more persons to do as per what the motion is suggesting is persons land banking and they are not Caymanian.
Mister Speaker, I recall reading an article about what was happening in Canada, Vancouver, just trying to remember the province it was happening in where they had a major problem with the Chinese who were purchasing up all the condos and apartments so much they had a rental problem because they were just buying it and land banking it because they had nothing else to do with their money and they got a password of purchasing the properties.
Mister Speaker, it was such a bad situation to the point where they have to bring in legislation to say if you own property and you are not staying in that property at least six months out of the year, that you’ll be taxed up to 25% of the value of the property in order to stop or slow down this, this property grab that was happening and ultimately having persons homeless because they didn’t have, they couldn’t build enough things fast enough.
And Mister Speaker, Vancouver didn’t believe in this continuing to develop. They wanted to counteract it. And I personally think it’s time for us to also consider that.
Bryn indicated that, in making his Vancouver comparison to Cayman and what measures could be considered for Cayman, he was “not trying to ruin the sales market and the capacity.” Instead, he was pointing out that “the demand is so heavy that you’re making the real estate market be out of the reach of Caymanians.”
Bryan hopes to put the real estate market back within Caymanians’ reach by speeding up the land supply.
To achieve his goal of a land supply increase, he acknowledged that some objections could arise in certain areas.
Regarding this, he said:
The discussion about the wetlands is a very sensitive one.
However, thankfully I got the opportunity to have a vacation the other day. I was in Orlando.
… you have to take a major highway through some wetlands, right? And the road seemed perfectly fine. I didn’t hear about the wetlands on either side dying. And the road has been efficiently and effective for probably longer than I will been there before I was born. So I don’t. I don’t understand the reluctancy to push this forward.
He continued:
I don’t want to go down this fight with the environmental movement again.
But I am so adamant that this pushback is affecting the people’s quality of life on so many levels.
Not only their emotional state, but their financial ability.
By time we get the road done because of all of this pushback, the house prices are going to be quadrupled.”
He concluded:
Mister Speaker, what we got to do is stop thinking short term.
The prevention of that road is short term thinking.And those who oppose it, I beg you for the benefit of the country, please start to think how can we get it done rather than trying to be in the way it has to happen.
They don’t want the building heights to go up so you can have more apartment complexes in one land zone.
They don’t want you to open up the land so you can build on more land that’s available.
What do you want?
