Governor Calls for Affordable Homes as Growth Squeezes Working Residents

Working residents must have a realistic opportunity to secure a safe, affordable home in the Turks and Caicos Islands, Her Excellency Governor Dileeni Daniel-Selvaratnam has said, warning that access to housing has not always kept pace with the territory’s economic and population growth.

GOVERNOR: Good government must both protect the integrity of our communities and widen access to safe, lawful and affordable housing.

In remarks for the Informal Settlements Unit roundtable marking World Habitat Day 2026, the Governor said the housing challenge extends beyond unlawful settlements to people who are employed, contributing to the economy and struggling to take their first step onto the home ownership ladder.

“Our rapid economic growth has brought tremendous opportunity, but prosperity has also created pressures,” she said.

High living costs, finite land and strained infrastructure are among those pressures. The cost of land and housing, she said, can make the aspiration of owning a home increasingly difficult to realise.

Speaking under the theme “Adequate Housing for All,” the Governor called for affordable housing to form part of the response, alongside planning that provides the services and infrastructure needed to sustain communities.

“But our ambition cannot simply be to build more homes. We must build communities.”

That means ensuring housing has access to schools, roads, utilities, transport and essential public services. The Governor said adequate housing requires authorities to consider how an entire community functions, rather than treating each home as an isolated development.

“If we are serious about adequate housing for all, we must plan for the whole community, not simply the individual home.”

Her remarks connected the wider affordability challenge with the emergence of informal settlements, where some residents cannot meet the cost of formal accommodation.

She said those settlements reflect a combination of domestic economic and housing pressures and the islands’ geographic position in a region where prolonged instability in Haiti continues to drive displacement and irregular migration.

The Governor cautioned against seeing settlements solely as unauthorised buildings on unlawfully occupied land. They also house families, children, people in insecure employment and others with differing needs and vulnerabilities.

However, she stressed that recognising those circumstances does not remove the obligation to uphold the law or address unsafe conditions.

Unplanned settlements can create sanitation and public health concerns, fire and environmental hazards, overcrowding, unsafe construction and difficulties for emergency services. They can also leave vulnerable residents outside the view of agencies responsible for their protection.

The Governor warned that weak authority within settlements can create opportunities for exploitation and organised criminality.

“This is therefore not a choice between humanity and enforcement.”

Authorities, she said, must protect people at risk while maintaining the meaning of land, planning, immigration and public safety laws. Regularisation cannot simply legitimise existing development, and enforcement cannot merely relocate the problem.

An effective response requires evidence about who lives in each settlement, the circumstances that brought them there and the risks involved. It must also consider which situations require protection, enforcement or responsible regularisation.

The Governor called for coordinated action across Housing, Planning, Immigration, Police, Health and Social Development, saying none of those agencies can resolve the challenge independently.

Government also needs partners outside the public sector. Investors, developers and utility providers help shape how and where communities grow, making their involvement necessary to wider housing and infrastructure solutions.

She said the state must both respond firmly and humanely to existing vulnerability and illegality and create opportunities for people seeking to establish homes lawfully.

“Good government must both protect the integrity of our communities and widen access to safe, lawful and affordable housing.”

Removing informal settlements alone should not be the ambition, she added. Authorities must reduce the conditions that allow them to take root without allowing informality to become a route around the law.

Commending the agencies that convened the roundtable, the Governor urged an ambitious discussion grounded in evidence.

Ultimately, she said, the goal is a society where lawful residents can live with dignity and security, and where the aspiration of a safe, affordable home is within reach.