Column: Michael Fahy On Housing Affordability
[Opinion column written by Michael Fahy]
According to the Government’s own Bermuda Job Market Employment Briefs 2026, jobs held by work-permit holders [excluding spouses of Bermudians and PRC holders] rose from 6,952 in 2021 to 9,099 in 2025. That is 2,147 more jobs, an increase of almost 31 per cent in four years. Over the same period, Bermudian employment kept slipping, down another 65 jobs last year alone. Part of that rise is recovery from a pandemic low, but the direction is unmistakable. This Government set out to grow the workforce, and it has. What it failed to do was plan where those workers would live, and Bermudian families are paying for that failure.
Let me be clear about what I am not saying. I am not saying Bermuda has too many guest workers. One of my first decisions after becoming Minister of Home Affairs in December 2012 was to scrap the term-limit policy for work-permit holders, introduced by the PLP Government, because it was driving skilled people, and the businesses that employed them, off the island. I said then that unless birth rates rose sharply, Bermuda would never produce enough Bermudians to fill its own job market. PLP spokesmen attacked me for it at the time and have done so ever since, despite knowing that term limits was likely legally unsound.
Today, the Government’s own figures make that case for me. About 1,200 workers reached retirement age last year, and Bermudians entering the workforce are, in the Government’s words, simply replacing those who leave. In 2022 the PLP Government set out an “aggressive” plan to grow the working population by roughly 8,418 people over five years. I welcome the conversion.
But openness was only ever half of the policy. At Home Affairs we paired it with protection for Bermudians which included a civil penalties regime allowing swifter enforcement against employers who abused work-permit rules, a “Wanted” regime to bring offenders to public attention, and a jobs board website and run on TV with Cablevision, giving Bermudians a running listing of vacancies. We were not perfect, but we were not anti-Bermudian. The Government has embraced the growth and neglected the second half. On a 21-square-mile island, that second half is housing.
The pressure lands in predictable places. Work-permit holders fall into two tiers. At the top are high-earning international business roles, and executives on corporate packages compete for the family homes that young Bermudian professionals hope to rent or buy. At the bottom are lower-paid hospitality and service jobs, where the most common permit role is cook, and cooks, housekeepers and landscapers need the cheapest studios and one- and two-bedroom units, the very segment young Bermudians most need. In my view, term limits had already squeezed that segment by replacing long-term families with a rotating stream of short-stay workers, and it remains the tightest in our market today. Caught in the middle are Bermudians, whose median pay has sat below the island-wide median for years and who have the least bargaining power of all. None of this is the workers’ fault. It is a failure of planning.
The Government’s answer has come late and small. Its Affordable Housing Strategy 2025–2035 was not published in consultation draft until May this year, long after the permit surge was under way, and was approved by the House only recently. By the Ministry’s own account, the strategy recognises that the housing market has struggled to keep pace with demand. The Minister has spoken of about 310 Phase 1 units within 18 months, but that figure includes emergency and supportive housing and refurbished homes. The strategy lists 229 new residential units for Phase 1 before 2028, at a cost of almost $115 million, and the two contracts signed so far cover 194 of them: 84 homes in Sandys and St David’s and 110 for seniors in Southampton. The full ten-year programme proposes 974 homes by 2035, at a cost of $418.5 million. More than 600 families are already on a government waiting list for affordable housing, by the Deputy Premier’s own count. Jobs are not the same as households. Some permit holders share accommodation, some fill seasonal posts, and executives on corporate packages are not competing for affordable units. However if just one in ten of those 2,147 extra permit jobs became a new household in the rental market, that alone would exceed the 194 homes Phase 1 is building, and not one of them is finished yet.
Sadly, the first homes will probably not reach the people who need them most. The strategy says households earning under $72,000 should be able to find housing at or below $1,800 a month. The first Albert Row units in Sandys will rent for $2,400 a month, rising by $100 after three years. The median Bermudian jobholder earned $69,915 last year and on that single income, the rent would take more than 41 per cent of gross pay. That is what happens when supply falls so far behind demand that even subsidised schemes cannot reach ordinary earners.
The private sector has not filled the gap either, and it is worth asking why. The strategy itself prices traditional construction at roughly $800 to $1,000 a square foot, and acknowledges that building costs now exceed the market value of what is built by more than 20 per cent. Add the cost of finance, land tax, import duty on materials and planning timelines measured in months, and a developer who builds an affordable unit loses money on it. Island-wide, only around 84 homes a year are completed across all categories. No public programme can close a gap that size on its own; the incentives facing private builders have to change.
Having started late, the Government is now trying to make up time by cutting corners. Minutes released under PATI show the Housing Minister’s advisory committee discussed using emergency powers this year to bypass planning, including the public’s right to object. The Attorney-General says the matter did not proceed to a formal request and the powers were never invoked, and the Ministry says the committee was simply exploring lawful options. Perhaps. But add a $64 million no-bid contract to a Virginia firm, another no-bid deal with a Barbados firm, and a planning refusal at Boaz Island overturned on ministerial appeal, and the pattern is clear. When planning sat within my ministry, we streamlined its procedures so that good projects could move faster within the rules. That is the hard, unglamorous work this Government skipped.
Speed matters, but so do the communities that receive new homes. Boaz Island residents objected that their neighbourhood was already one of the most densely populated parts of the island, and the planning report on the Victoria Place II scheme in Sandys warned that its low-cost design would have adverse visual impacts. Housing is not just a count of units. It needs roads, water, sewerage, transport and schools, and it needs the consent of the neighbourhoods it joins. That is why the public’s right to object should be respected, not designed out.
It is not too late. What Bermuda lacks is a single national population, workforce and housing strategy, one that ties the Government’s growth targets to the homes, roads, utilities and schools needed to support them. Within that strategy, a government serious about matching workers to homes would do five things. It would publish an annual workforce and housing forecast, setting expected permit numbers alongside new housing completions. It would consider requiring large employers that depend heavily on permits to contribute to staff housing, as Government has long required of hotel developments. It would pass a Housing Investment Act, the residential equivalent of the incentives offered to hotel developers such as time-bound land tax exemptions, duty relief on materials and density bonuses for schemes in Hamilton and other designated zones, together with a fast-track planning route that keeps the public’s right to object. In return, developers would provide a minimum affordable component of, say, 30 per cent, held at affordable rents for at least ten years. It would reward guest workers who put down roots rather than churning short-stay permits, while planning honestly for what that means: workers who settle with their families need larger homes, so a stability policy must come with family housing to match. Finally, it would run its building programme through open, competitive tender, so that speed does not come at the cost of public trust.
Bermuda needs guest workers. I argued that when it was unpopular, and I argue it now, but it needs homes at the same time. Four years of data show which one this Government planned for, and Bermudian families are paying the rent on that mistake. In its haste to correct its own mistakes, financial good governance has been ignored. At what price?
- Michael Fahy is the Shadow Minister of Economy, Labour and Housing and the MP for Constituency 20. He can be reached on mfahy@oba.bm or opedfahy@gmail.com.
