Hail Grenada, land of ours — today?

by Keith Williams

Anyone who listened to the talk show “To The Point” hosted by Glen Telesford (aka “GT”) on GBN last Friday morning should have been left with no reservation that the caption of this opinion piece as it appears in our national anthem merely amounts to idle chatter.

Except for one caller, everyone who contributed to the show expressed serious concerns about the prohibitive cost of land in Grenada and the dwindling opportunities for locals to own land.

While certain people could easily afford to pay the starting price of EC$14 per square foot for a plot of land, such a price puts land ownership beyond the reach of most Grenadians.

As the available data shows, a sizable number of the folks currently purchasing land in the country are Grenadians who have returned “home” from abroad or people categorised as “Citizens by Investment” who arrive here from some of the more well-to-do countries loaded with US dollars.

Given that US$1 is equivalent to approximately EC$2.70, a local has to fork out almost 3 times as much dough as someone with US currency to own a piece of Mother Earth.

The reality becomes even gloomier since most Grenadians earn an average monthly income of less than EC$3,000. When one considers the difference between the high cost of living in Grenada compared to the industrialised countries, the obstacles confronting aspiring Grenadian homeowners multiply again and again.

The late Prime Minister Sir Eric Gairy attempted to alleviate the problem of land ownership by distributing certain parcels of land to low-income Grenadians through a programme dubbed “Land for the landless.”

During the Maurice Bishop-led revolution (1979 to 1983), mobs appropriated lots of land in different areas of the country in the name of the revolution. Many of those folks continue to live as “squatters” despite serious opposition from certain circles.

The Keith Mitchell administration attempted to alleviate the situation by allocating so-called “house spots” in a helter-skelter manner to certain people who might never have been able to afford the price of land at any cost. Since then, the Dickon Mitchell administration has attempted to introduce some sanity by giving such homeowners titles to their land.

Since Grenada is a small, hilly country, early-comers have already bought almost all the flat areas, and the remaining flat land is sold at a premium. The only option for latecomers at this juncture is to build their houses clinging to the sides of ubiquitous precipices, perched upon pillars that are as high as 40 feet in many cases.

Traditionally, most land transactions occurred directly between landowners and buyers. In those days, a person would only part with a bit of his property in dire circumstances and sell only as much land as was needed to satisfy certain immediate needs. More importantly, business was strictly conducted in the local currency.

With the arrival of foreign real estate companies like RE/MAX and Century21, the opportunities for land ownership have become increasingly prohibitive. These days, huge plots of land like the former Hope Estate are up for sale to the highest bidders. To add insult to injury, the price of land amounts to more than what it takes to build a decent “Grenadian-style” 3-bedroom home, and most transactions only occur in US currency.

At this stage, and with all due respect to our Caymanian neighbours, the spectre of the tri-island state progressively becoming a clone of the Cayman Islands does not seem too farfetched. While Caymanians can boast of having the highest standard of living in the Caribbean, the natives seem to matter only to the extent that they are required to facilitate the lifestyle of the rich and famous, who regard those islands as their exclusive playground.

For instance, as one of the talk show callers stated, he was denied a loan by one of the local banks to purchase a piece of land in the True Blue neighbourhood while a so-called “Citizen by Investment” ended up owning the property. (Parenthetically, the story of vicious dogs having more rights than ordinary Grenadians might be another serious cause for concern.)

The only consolation for Grenadians is that the “land grabbing” phenomenon is not unique to the spice islands. The Chinese steadfastly demonstrate this urgency by constructing dozens of man-made islands in the Pacific Ocean. Moreover, they are not shy to let the rest of the world know that nothing would stop them from adding another 14,000 square miles to the Chinese mainland by appropriating Taiwan.

Similarly, the Saudi Arabians are busily purchasing land wherever the opportunity presents itself. For instance, they have purchased over 1,930 sq. miles of arable land in the African country of Tanzania. Such a transaction causes the jitters because the acquired acreage amounts to almost 15 times the size of Grenada. Even worse, the newly acquired land is exclusively used to grow food for the benefit of the foreign owners.

As if to pre-empt any out-of-control “land grabbing” occurring in the United States, many state governors have linked the inflationary cost of housing to foreign speculators playing the stock market. And so, they have attempted to nip the looming threat in the bud by prohibiting the sale of real estate to Chinese and Indians.

As most callers to the talk show agreed, the present administration seems to be on the right trajectory by proposing that capping the astronomical increase in the price of land might be the most pragmatic solution to the problem. The late President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana was even more stringent in his view by insisting that land should never be treated as a marketable commodity.

Meanwhile, it would be remiss of Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell to backtrack on his views about the magnitude of the problem or “to chicken out” due to the dilemma in which any attempted cure might place him. In other words: “Damn if you do, and damn if you don’t.”