Social Commentator and host of Honestly Speaking, Pastor Claude O. Skelton-Cline has called for a revision of the access to the Virgin Islands (VI) real estate market given to expats. Photo: Internet Source

Pastor Claude O. Skelton-Cline during Honestly Speaking on Tuesday, February 17, 2026. Photo: Facebook

Pastor Claude O. Skelton-Cline said the last National Democratic Party (NDP) government allowed individuals who bought and built homes using non-Belonger’s Landholders Licences to rent these homes. Photo: Facebook/NDP/File

According to Skelton-Cline, on Honestly Speaking on ZBVI 780 AM on Tuesday, February 17, 2026, non-Belongers need a Non-Belonger’s Landholder’s License to purchase land, but “it depends on who you are and what you know.”

He made these statements during part three of the series titled ‘Can I say some things and still be loved?’. According to the commentator, the last National Democratic Party (NDP) government allowed individuals who bought and built homes using non-Belonger’s Landholders Licences to rent these homes. 

NDP’s fault?

“That was the wrong move,” he said, “It remains a wrong move today.”

Land ownership, the leveraging of that land, the building of homes, and eventual renting of these to expats coming in, on the onset of trust companies coming, were among the key business models in the VI, Skelton-Cline said. 

He argued that the accusations that the homes on the hills were built using drug money and other kinds of foolishness are nonsense. 

This business model is not native to the VI but is regional, as Caribbean people are known to be land-rich, using and leveraging that land and building homes. 

“Expats who can afford it paid for it. We paid off our mortgages in record time. Some homeowners would live in the apartment [and] let the renters live on the main house, paying 6,7, 8 thousand dollars a month, when financial services was at its peak.”

It must be corrected

Skelton-Cline said eventually, “Expats, persons who hold Non-Belongers Landholders Licence, to enter the local market and begin to rent their space, which then pushes out locals out of their own real estate market.”

This, he added, needs to be corrected and needs to be asked of by the current government and future governments. 

“These are some of the things you need to raise with them. How are we going to put some of this paste back in the tube and don’t let them tell you that we can’t.”