A Caymanian family of seven say they are days away from “pitching tents on the beach” after being left homeless and unable to find an affordable place to stay.
Over the last month they have slept in cars, borrowed money for hotel rooms and huddled in a one-bedroom flat provided by a charity. Now the married couple and their five children have been left with nowhere to go.
The 33-year-old mother says it is impossible to find anywhere within their price range that will accept a family of this size. Collectively, she and her husband earn close to $3,000 a month – too much to qualify for government support, but too little to afford a place to stay.
“They’re saying that we have no financial shortfall … but there’s seven of us and the cheapest two-bedroom we can find is $2,700,” she said. “Right now, I don’t know where we are going to sleep from one night to the next. We’re ready to go and pitch our tents on the beach and hope the government will step up.”
Her five children are aged between 9 and 14.
Most recently, the family had found some stability living with her husband’s parents. But since that arrangement came to an end three weeks ago, they have been unable to find anywhere they can afford.
Her husband’s salary as a mechanic and her own stipend from government – as a student in cosmetology school – barely cover the grocery bills. She is close to graduation and the prospect of a regular pay cheque but is tempted to drop out and take whatever work she can get to cover the bills.
“If [the government] could just give us a little help till the end of November. After that we could figure it out. Our government is reactive not proactive. They want to wait till you fall flat on your face before they will help.”
The Department of Financial Assistance does provide rental help to those who are struggling. For families of seven or more, the maximum earning threshold to qualify is $4,000 a month or $4,000 in savings.
However, she received notice from the department that she did not meet the criteria for rental support. She has appealed the decision and is awaiting a response. In the interim she has been unable, in any case, to find a place that would be willing to take Financial Assistance clients with multiple children.
“Nobody wants to rent to a family with five kids,” she said.
Non-profit ARK, along with and friends and family, have helped out. Now government is temporarily funding a hotel room. But she still has no clarity on whether they will get support longer term.
A constant struggle
She acknowledged life had been a struggle since she had her first child as a teenager, but says she has always worked and has never relied on government support. Now, as housing costs have rocketed, it has become impossible to get by in Cayman, even with the support of her partner.
“It’s like government turns a blind eye, and when everything hits the fan and we’re homeless, they look at me like, ‘Why do you have all these kids if you can’t take care of them?’” she said. “I’ve never had support from government and I am not asking them to take care of me or maintain me, just help me for a few months to get over this bump.”
Her case highlights gaps in the system. For instance, the rental support provided by government appears to be “all or nothing”. There’s no partial support on offer for those who can pay some but not all of their rent.
“It would be easier to get support if we weren’t working at all,” she said.
A more practical challenge is that there is no help to find housing. There are few properties available that are affordable so landlords can be choosy about who they rent to. The family has been willing to cram into a one-bedroom flat, funded by ARK, over the past two weeks, but strata rules don’t allow that kind of arrangement long-term. Even landlords with three-bedroom homes have refused their applications, telling her there are too many kids.
“Why doesn’t the government just build their own apartment complex and use that to house people? Give us restrictions, give us rules – save money, get on your feet, and then you have to find somewhere for yourself,” she said.
A further challenge is the hard reality for large families in Cayman as prices at stores have surged. There’s no equivalent of the UK ‘Child Benefit’ scheme which provides monthly stipends to the primary carers of children to help them meet basic needs.
‘Just surviving’
In Cayman the payments would likely need to be higher but it could be a tool that helps parents keep a roof over their children’s heads and keep them in school.
“I’ve never got the chance to live life. I’ve just been surviving,” she said. “I want to finish school, start my own business, and build something so my kids don’t have to beg like I have to do.”
Tara Nielsen, of ARK, expressed support for a child-benefit style system. The charity is also seeking donors to expand its transitional housing options and build new town homes in West Bay for families who can’t find anywhere to stay.
Nielsen said she is personally familiar with the family in this case and praised the mother as a hard-working, dedicated parent who would do anything for her kids.
“It is so hard right now for anyone to keep up with the cost of living. With five children it is almost impossible. Some families are always going to need a little help.”
The Department of Financial Assistance did not respond to questions from the Compass.
If you can help this family contact ARK here , or donate directly here, with the note ‘housing family’.
Related Videos
We actually need to be honest with ourselves here. Not many people on island or any country can afford FIVE kids. We need to think before popping them out left, right and center and then relying on the government.
I truely hope they find the help they need but this is more of a burden on our resources than Expats who are paying us money all over the place. People need to think about the costs of having a kid, let alone 5.
Cayman is a very wealthy country. Why can’t it support FEW large Caymanian families?
All negative comments here are from EXPATS who settled in Cayman and now dictate how many children Caymanian can have. It is expats moving to the wealthy Cayman drive up the cost of living for local residents.
Russia, for example, supports large families with significant financial incentives, housing assistance, and other social benefits as part of a national strategy to boost the birth rate. A family is officially designated as “large” when it has three or more children, and support measures generally continue until the eldest child reaches 18, or 23 if they are a full-time student.
• All children receive free healthcare in Russia
• Maternity Capital: This is a major one-time federal payment given to families upon the birth or adoption of a child.
• Monthly allowances: Families with children, including large families, receive monthly allowances and other social payments.
• Mortgage relief: The government offers mortgage subsidies and repayment assistance for families with multiple children.
• Preferential mortgages: A lower interest rate mortgage program is available for families with children.
• Housing payments: Payments intended to improve living conditions can be used for purchasing housing that needs alterations or to take out construction loans.
• Regional benefits: While a federal executive order ensures baseline support, individual regions may offer additional benefits, such as free medication for young children or discounts on utility payments.
Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and Finland, Estonia, Denmark, and Luxembourg also provide generous benefits for families with many children.
Russia is hardly a model of how a country should be run.
Sorry, but I disagree that taxpayers should be forced to subsidize couples who have children they can’t afford to raise.
Even in the UK the child allowance is limited to two children.
Caymanians urged to have more kids.
“MLA Chris Saunders (BTW) has said that Caymanians need to “make more children” to prevent the country from getting into future trouble as a result of a declining birth rate. The opposition MLA made the plea to the country during a debate about amending the Labour Law to make maternity leave provisions for private sector workers equal to those offered in the civil service.” July 20, 2020
Imelda Your answer is government should pay. Government, is paid for by the people. People can’t afford to pay for the hemorrhaging government programs. Personal accountability. Here’s a novel idea, work, stop having kids you can’t afford, and be a responsible parent and teach your children consequences.
I do feel terrible for the potentially homeless family. No doubt. With 5 kids, will 5 become 6, or 7. How much is government expected to foot the bill. We all must take responsibility for our actions. This may seem harsh, but this is an unfortunate situation, where adults need to act as such.
Homelessness is not something anyone should experience. But people have to be cognizant of their realities.
Sorry if I’m sounding judgemental but with today’s high cost of living in Cayman, no one should have 5 children by age 33. Granted, having a child at 16 may have been unintended but to have 4 more without considering one’s circumstances is poor judgement.
Neither Government nor ARK, nor any other entity is obligated to help, as the lady featured seems to feel. The public should not have to bail out people who make poor choices, which they cannot afford.
It is hurtful to consider a family sleeping in tents or cars but people must plan their lives. Having more kids than one can afford is simply bad, or no planning.
Nevertheless, I wish this family better times.
Is your solution that Social Services comes and takes some children away? Just asking, you can move on to suggesting sterilization after that.
It sounded like they were willing to accept a fairly low standard of housing, looking for a 2bed, but regardless of their situation it shows how difficult housing is for some people to find. I’m sure they realize they are poor but just want a safe place to stay with their children. Unfortunately, something we don’t know about appears to have compromised their housing with the father’s parents.
I think this is a lesson to others – to consider the costs of having children. Government should fund them temporarily but the bigger focus must be to help the parents put together a plan to get their lives on track and live independently.
It might seem harsh but looking at the bigger picture, if government constantly funded all families like this it would encourage irresponsible family planning to others and place a large burden on our resources.
Adam J, your suggestion in your first paragraph is a humane and reasonable compromise. Fair enough.
But the scenario of your second paragraph is late, I’m afraid.
Situations like this, with people not taking responsibility for properly planning for life’s circumstances and expecting Government help, are common and have been partly created by Government “constantly funding families” over the past 2 decades. Another part of the problem is young Caymanian women falling for whatever charm exists in “breeding” for foreign men who have no interest in fatherhood responsibilities, only securing their own tenure in Cayman.
I’m not saying this is the case in the family featured in the article, but it definitely happens and these “men” boast about creating Caymanian family ties……I’ve personally heard this.
Someone was being cynical about sterilization. Hmm?🤔 It’s effective but unfortunately illegal.
Several fellow commentators have focused on the obvious; don’t have children if you can’t afford to raise them.
But that horse has left the barn long ago. The problem isn’t the family’s inability to raise children although that remains unresolved, but the needs of these children who are going to provide the next generation of islanders either useful, productive citizens or resentful, abused by the system social predators to cite two possible extremes.
Th Islands have seen a period of rapid, perhaps too rapid, growth resulting in many inequalities, the same inequalities that exist on the mainland but exaggerated because of our compact size and disproportionate wealth. at the top.
The solution is both obvious and in complete negation of our entire raison d’etre.
Cayman needs a stable well housed working class — and I mean working not lower class. In fact it cannot function without it.
Whether that cash for that work comes from private charity the or public weal makes no difference. It has got to be found.
Or the entire system which we all depend upon falters and eventually fails.
Having situations like these, in Cayman, is really horrible. It happens elsewhere too, btw. These articles bring attention to the struggles of some of the community. There should be a way to provide assistance.
As we read about these stories, when will Compass write stories of Caymanians that have overcome their challenges? I would like to know about those that come from humble and even poverty, yet they rise and over come. I would like to hear from other Caymanians about how they beat their circumstances.
This paper is constantly doing exactly that, writing stories about Cayman success, triumph by individuals against the odds and winning.
The stories may not specifically recount early economic hardship but it is often implicit.
It’s human nature to want more Horatio Algers and less “East of Eden” and media will generally go along with this approach anyway as it sell more papers.
In this case the paper has departed from this policy and written a balanced story about human tragedy; the dark side of immense housing cost profiteering.
If we ignore it, it lessens the chance of writing more of the same perhaps slightly uncomfortable journalism and triggering those better human instinct we all have.
But all three of us might be making a grave omission.
“Our government is reactive not proactive. They want to wait till you fall flat on your face before they will help.”
What would have been considered proactive action by the Government in this situation?
While I agree, any of us can fall into a bad financial situation in the blink of an eye by things like divorce, loss of job, death of a spouse but there are times we deliberately put ourselves in a bad financial situation due to out choices.
Having a child at 16, no vocational skill or tertiary education, not having a good paying job but decides to have 4 more children while the consolidated family income is “almost” $3,000 per month is shooting yourself in the foot and not giving yourself a fighting chance.
You do realize that if we say the apparent inability to house themselves is a self inflicted injury therefore not the responsibility of the community-at-large or any one of us to assist, we leave the children at risk?
You may say even if that is true it remains the parents’ not society’s responsibility.
Even if you are right about that, it still makes sense to spend a small amount to ensure proper child care and education.
If the moral argument has no appeal then the economic argument should.
The cost of housing federal inmates runs about $350 a day. The price of a hotel room. The of ensuring the children are brought up with food shelter and education a fraction of that.
Plus instead of being a drain on society they contribute toward it.
It’s simple economics.