Land Bank should be introduced in VI - Douglas Wheatley
As a result of this talk show host, Douglas Wheatley felt that a land bank should be established in the territory. These views were expressed on his weekly radio show, Speak Out BVI, aired on a local radio station last evening, September 11, 2012.
Wheatley felt that the land that we once used to pride ourselves on, boasting that we were “landowners of the BVI” is steadily slipping away from us and is going into the hands of others.
He said in the course of discussions with others on this matter, the name Conrad Maduro arose.
He described the situation where many years ago, Maduro made a suggestion of a land bank that would help to keep the land that “ancestral Virgin Islanders owned, within the family structure.”
Wheatley lamented the fact that after all these years Maduro’s suggestion was not seen as fit to be implemented.
The importance of this he felt was so that people could be helped “to maintain control of their land.”
The host expressed that until recently anyone could buy [land], remarking that if you were an expatriate, you didn’t have to have a licence. He added that after many many years, this rule has now changed and persons have to adhere to the regulations in place.
“I think what is important is this land bank…. we really ought to do something about it,” he said.
He concluded by saying that even though we have lost a lot already, “perhaps we can still do something to redeem the situation.”
A land bank transaction generally involves the acquisition of land for the purpose of reserving it for specified future development types.
The land bank concept can include management of existing publicly owned lands, with designated reservations or restrictions for future uses.
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10 Responses to “Land Bank should be introduced in VI - Douglas Wheatley”
Thus, as a result many indigenous Virgin Islanders families held land in common. In a sense they could be considered the wealthy poor. This may sound like an oxymoron but it may hold true for Virgin Islander landownership is sometwhat differrent than in other Anglophone regional countries. Nevertheless, over the past half century, too much of this non-renewable resource slipped out of Virgin Islanders ownership, especially prime land. If this trend continues in the not too distant future, all future generations will be to do is walk by, drive by or sail by and lament that their grand parents once own this or that piece of property. It is already a reality.
Consequently, a mechanism is needed that afford Virgin Islanders the opportunity to leverage their land for wealth building yet protect local ownership of the land perhaps into perpetuity. A land bank is one means of addressing the rapid decline of local landownership. Typically, a land bank is created to effectively hold, manage, and developed foreclosed property. This definition can be restructured to meet and protect local land ownership. If adopted and implemented, constraints must be put in place to ensure that it is meeting its intended purpose of protecting Virgin Islander landownership and not turn into a reverse Robin Hood scheme. It cannot and should not result in a scheme where the rich is taking from the poor.