Opinion | Should Turks and Caicos Choose Between Growth and Affordability? I Don’t Think So.

An Op-Ed by Donnie Gardiner

Last week, I was privileged to participate in what I understand to be the Turks and Caicos Islands’ first-ever Youth Tribunal, a forum that brought together young people from across our islands to debate, deliberate, and speak on matters of national importance.

Donnie Gardiner

The topic put before us was this:

Should the Turks and Caicos Islands prioritize controlling the cost of living over rapid economic growth?

My answer, standing in front of that room, was simple: I do not think we should have to choose.

But the fact that we are even being asked the question tells us something important. It tells us that many people in these islands are not feeling the benefits of our growth. And that is a problem we cannot afford to ignore.

A Table That Not Everyone Can Reach

Many of us grew up around Sunday dinner. Peas and rice, fry fish, baked chicken, macaroni, potato salad. Family filling the house. Laughter coming from every corner.

When that table was prepared, everyone was supposed to eat.

I used that image in my remarks because I believe it captures something true about where we are as a nation. Our table is growing. Tourism is expanding. Investment is flowing. New developments are rising across Providenciales and beyond. By nearly every headline measure, the Turks and Caicos Islands is thriving.

And yet, many Turks and Caicos Islanders are asking an honest question: are we actually feeling it?

The numbers give us reason to pause. A July 2025 analysis of 914 real estate listings found that the median price of a two-bedroom home in TCI had reached $995,000. Even when beachfront and waterfront properties were excluded, the median remained $607,000. The same analysis reported that government stamp duty income rose from $21.9 million in 2014 to $48.5 million in 2024.

At the same time, our national minimum wage remains $8 per hour for many workers.

I do not raise these figures to be alarmist. I raise them because they are real, and because the young people in that room deserve to hear them spoken plainly. Growth and affordability are not supposed to be enemies. When they begin to feel that way, it is a signal that something in how we are governing our growth needs to change.

This pressure is not limited to housing or groceries. It extends to the cost of staying connected to the very places on which island residents often depend.

For many families, South Florida is not simply a vacation destination. It is where they go for school supplies, essential shopping, medical appointments, and connections to wider opportunities. Yet, at the time of writing, American Airlines displayed May 2026 round-trip economy fares from Providenciales to Miami beginning at $1,201, with some displayed fares reaching $1,311. By comparison, the airline displayed May round-trip economy fares from Bridgetown, Barbados to Miami beginning at $983, despite Barbados being much farther from South Florida. Fares change quickly, and a single snapshot is not the whole story. But it illustrates a frustration many residents already know: even necessary access can become painfully expensive.

Electricity is another essential burden. Electricity costs in TCI have long been identified as among the highest in the Caribbean, a reality shaped in part by our small size and dependence on imported fuel.

That issue is not merely economic. It is deeply human. In August 2025, four people, including a young girl, were found dead in a home in South Dock, Providenciales, in what police believed may have been carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a generator. We should not assume the reason any household uses a generator unless the facts are established. But we should recognize the broader truth: safe and affordable access to electricity is not a luxury. It is a matter of dignity, security, and, at times, life and death.

The Tools We Have Must Become More Visible and More Effective

One of the most important things I discovered while preparing for the Youth Tribunal was that TCI already has a Consumer Protection Ordinance.

Passed in 2016, amended in 2019, and brought into force in 2020, the Ordinance provides protections against misleading and deceptive conduct, false representation, and unfair business practices. The Department of Trade, Industry and Fair Competition is tasked with protecting consumer rights, supporting fair trade and competition, and disseminating accurate information in the marketplace.

It is also important to be clear about what the law currently does not do. According to the Government’s own public statement, the Department does not have power under the Ordinance to regulate the prices at which goods or services are sold in the Turks and Caicos Islands. Consumers can make complaints where they believe they have been adversely affected, but the Department cannot simply set prices under the existing framework.

That distinction matters, because the solution cannot simply be to point to a law and pretend the problem has been solved. The Ordinance gives us an important foundation for consumer protection. But if families continue to struggle with the cost of food, fuel, electricity, housing, and essential travel, then we must be willing to ask what additional policy tools are needed.

The Government already publishes Breadbasket Reports and Fuel Reports through the Department’s website, including reports released in May 2026. That is a valuable starting point. But the scale of the cost-of-living challenge requires something broader, clearer, and easier for the public to use.

This is precisely why the choice between growth and affordability is a false one. Protecting consumers, making essential costs transparent, and ensuring that development serves the people who call these islands home are not obstacles to growth. They are what make growth sustainable.

Three Practical Steps Forward

I am not writing this article simply to lament the problem. I am writing because choosing between growth and affordability is not our only option. There are concrete actions our government can take to ensure that economic growth in TCI lifts everyone, not just some.

1. Tie Workforce Housing to Major Development Approvals

As major hotels, resorts, residential communities, and commercial projects continue to rise across our islands, we must begin asking a hard question during the planning process: where will the people who build, staff, clean, secure, maintain, and serve these developments afford to live?

Development should not only create jobs. It should help create communities.

The Cayman Islands, another high-cost tourism-driven economy, recently adopted a Public and Affordable Housing Policy and Ten-Year Strategic Plan after recognizing that strong foreign investment and economic expansion had contributed to serious housing affordability challenges for local residents and workers.

TCI should study similar options, including requiring large-scale developments to contribute toward workforce housing, employee accommodation, or a dedicated affordable housing fund as part of the approval process.

This is not anti-development. It is responsible development. When a project profits from our land, our labour, our infrastructure, and our national brand, it should contribute to the stability of the communities that make that success possible.

2. Expand Existing Reports into a Public Cost-of-Living Dashboard

TCI does not need to begin from nothing. The Government already publishes Breadbasket Reports and Fuel Reports. The next step should be to expand these efforts into a clear, regularly updated public cost-of-living dashboard.

That dashboard should track the prices of essentials that families cannot simply choose to avoid: bread, milk, rice, cooking gas, fuel, electricity, basic household items, and, where appropriate, the cost of essential regional air access.

The public should be able to see where prices are rising, how different suppliers compare, and what government is doing when essential costs become unusually burdensome. This would not automatically reduce every price, but it would make the problem measurable, visible, and harder to ignore.

Barbados provides a helpful regional example. Its Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs operates PriceCheck, a public platform designed to monitor and compare consumer goods prices across retailers and supermarkets.

TCI can build on the work it has already started. Families should not have to rely on rumours, scattered receipts, or social media frustration to understand whether the cost of basic life is rising beyond reason. Good governance begins with good information, made public and made useful.

3. Build Ownership Pathways, Not Just Employment

Tourism and development will continue to grow in TCI. That is not in question. What is in question is who benefits from that growth in the long run.

Our young people should not simply be employed within the industries shaping our future. They should own within them.

That requires intentional investment in technical training, apprenticeships, entrepreneurship support, access to capital, and leadership pipelines designed to produce Turks and Caicos Islanders who are not only workers, but business owners, managers, developers, skilled tradespeople, and investors.

We must also be honest about the connection between affordability and ownership. A young person who spends most of his or her income simply trying to afford rent, groceries, electricity, and transportation is being denied the ability to save, invest, purchase property, or build a business.

A country whose citizens do not own a meaningful share of its primary industries has not truly developed. It has simply been developed.

Ownership is how growth becomes generational.

We Do Not Have to Choose

The topic posed to us at the Youth Tribunal framed growth and affordability as competing priorities. I pushed back on that framing then, and I push back on it now.

In a healthy economy, growth and the wellbeing of ordinary people are not rivals. Growth was always meant to be the engine that makes life better for the people it serves, not a rising tide that lifts luxury yachts while leaving fishing boats behind.

The moment we accept that we must choose between a thriving economy and families who can afford to live here, we have already conceded too much.

What TCI needs is not less growth. What TCI needs is growth with intention, growth with accountability, and growth with the political courage to ensure that ordinary Turks and Caicos Islanders, working families, and young people building their futures here are not left behind.

Our existing consumer protection framework gives us a foundation. Our development sector gives us leverage. Our young people, as demonstrated at the Youth Tribunal, have both the ideas and the urgency.

We do not have to choose between growth and affordability. We simply have to govern as though both matter.

Because the goal is not to make the table smaller.

The goal is to make sure that as the table grows, everyone has a seat.