A government task force examining Cayman’s housing shortage is considering regulating the local rental market to combat excessively high rents and the inferior quality of some properties, according to Tourism Minister Kenneth Bryan.
Bryan, who is a member of the inter-ministerial housing task force set up in March last year, said the group, at a meeting with the government caucus last week, discussed the need for regulations of pricing and standards for rental properties on island, which currently do not exist.
Bryan, speaking on Radio Cayman’s ‘For the Record’ on Friday, 21 July, said the standard for rental properties had “diminished over time, due to the fact it’s not regulated in any way” because previously “we did not think there was a need for it”.
He added, “It is becoming quite sad that some people are taking advantage of renters, giving them below expected standards for a human being to sleep in and charging them very, very high prices… But, you know, people have to accept what they can get because the demand is so high and [there is] limited availability.”
Bryan, on Radio Cayman, said the islands’ growth rate and its “severe effect on the demand for housing” was among the subjects discussed by the task force at the meeting.
He noted that there are approximately 36,000 work permit holders in Cayman, as well as growing numbers gaining Caymanian status, and that the population is considered to be over 80,000, and is likely to grow to at east 100,000 over the next decade.
“The demand for housing is only going to continue,” he said. “If we don’t do something… there will be a point where people can’t pay for a roof over their head.”
Lack of useful legislation
There are two pieces of legislation that apply to the rental market – the Landlord and Tenants Act, which was enacted in 1838, and the Registered Land Act, but neither addresses price gouging or sub-par property standards.
There is, however, another law that does address these issues. The Residential Tenancies Act was passed by the Legislative Assembly, now Parliament, in 2009, but has never been brought into force.
This legislation was drafted following recommendations from the Law Reform Commission in 2008. The commission had been invited by the then leader of government business (now known as premier) Kurt Tibbetts to examine legislation surrounding the rights of tenants and landlords following the many rental-related complaints seen after the passage of 2005’s Hurricane Ivan.
The Law Reform Commission recommended that the Landlord and Tenants Act should be repealed and replaced with the Registered Land Act, which includes a provision for the establishment of a ‘Residential Tenancies Commissioner’ to mediate in matter of contention between landlords and tenants. It also makes provision for the regulation of rent increases and how deposits are handled.
The rent increases seen following Hurricane Ivan were driven by a lack of housing due to the damage wrought by the storm. In 2023, the current increases appear to be propelled by islands’ rapidly growing population.
The Registered Land Act states that a landlord’s rental property must be “habitable” and keep the “roof, main walls and main drains and common passages” in good repair, but other than the Planning Department issuing a certificate of occupancy on newly built properties, there is no mechanism in Cayman for rental properties to be inspected to ensure they are habitable.
There is also no government body to whom a renter or landlord can report breaches of contract. In such cases, as tenancy agreements are governed by civil law, the renter or landlord would have to take the matter to court to be settled.
Other housing issues
As well as rental market regulations, the task force, which also consists of Premier Wayne Panton, Deputy Premier Minister Juliana O’Connor, Housing Minister Jay Ebanks and Social Development Minister André Ebanks, also discussed changing zoning laws to enable apartment buildings to be built higher or on smaller land lots, and the construction and availability of social housing or affordable housing.
Bryan said another mechanism for making more housing available is reverting to a former practice in Cayman of allowing homeowners to expand their properties by 10% without planning permission. Often, that additional room or small building extension would have been rented out to a tenant, and served as an extra source of income for the homeowner.
Drafting instructions have already been sent to the Legal Department to draw up a paper “to change the law to allow us to go back to what we used to have before,” Bryan said.
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