Participation

We Will All Benefit from these Projects! I had always understood that one of the excuses for permitting hotel development on our Island was the consequential improvements that would come to the lives of Anguillians. These improvements were not only to be jobs in the hotels. We were going to benefit from ownership, if not of major hotels, then of the smaller ancillary services that add on to the tourist industry. So, we would own the car rentals, the water sports, the tour operations, the restaurants, and the rental apartments. I am particularly concerned about the rental apartments. We were told that, with the expansion in the hotels expected over the coming five years, there will be a need for lower to middle income housing for hotel staff.

The most expensive of the local investment initiatives has been the property development business. Ministers of government have challenged us to go into property development to take advantage of the coming boom. Young men and women have gone to the banks and mortgaged their properties to build apartments for rent. Rental apartments have been going up all over the island. The success of this endeavour depends on the apartments producing the income that will pay the mortgages. Few Anguillians have the income or the capital to afford to put up these apartments without borrowing.

If Anguillians cannot rent out these new apartments, they will lose them. In particular, if the major hotels are permitted to own their own rental apartments, then the many Anguillians who have taken up the challenge will be the losers. Their apartments will not be able to compete. They will remain empty. Anguillians will be deprived of their opportunity to benefit from the coming tourism boom. They will be unable to pay their bank loans. They will lose their properties, which will then be bought at distressed prices by the hotels to use for their staff.

Now, I hear that some of the major hotel developers on Anguilla have been given Aliens Landholding Licences to purchase land to put up apartments for their staff. The word I have is that one investor in particular has purchased land in the area of the West End Gas Station, but on the opposite side of the road. They plan to put up a hundred staff apartments on it. The Planning Department would have had to approve this project. Cabinet would have had to grant the licence. There has been no public announcement or explanation.

What, I ask, is the meaning of this? If it is true, then why has there been no debate in the community about this development? Is no one concerned?