Imagine two people making a decision about Bermuda. One is a young Bermudian studying overseas and deciding whether to come home. The other is a nurse who has been offered a job here and is deciding whether to take it. Their circumstances are very different, but they find themselves asking many of the same questions. What will I earn? What will my rent cost? Can I find somewhere decent to live? What will groceries and everyday life cost me? At the end of the month, will I actually be better off?

Both could reach the same conclusion. “I can’t afford Bermuda.”

That is why our conversation about population growth has to be about much more than how many additional people we want to bring to the island.

Bermuda does need to grow. We need a strong working population, successful businesses and the people required to support our hospital, schools, hotels, construction industry, international business sector and public services an ageing population will increasingly depend upon.

But I think we sometimes start with the wrong question.

Instead of beginning with how many more people Bermuda needs, start with what we need those people to do.

Previously, I wrote about using workforce data to understand where shortages exist and where they are likely to develop. If we know what skills Bermuda will need, we can prepare more Bermudians for those opportunities.

We should always start there.

But, we are a small country with a sophisticated economy. We will never be able to fill every position locally, and people from overseas have contributed to Bermuda for generations.

Once we understand what our economy needs, we can determine what roles need to be filled locally, where more Bermudians can be trained and where genuine shortages require international recruitment.

Where those workers come from should not be the beginning of the conversation. What Bermuda needs should be.

Then we face the other side of the problem. We may decide we need a nurse. The nurse still has to decide they need Bermuda.

Skilled people have choices. If housing is too expensive or unavailable and everyday costs swallow most of the additional salary, Bermuda becomes harder to sell.

The same pressures affect the Bermudians we want to come home.

This makes our cost of living more than a household problem. It affects our ability to keep Bermudians, attract the people our economy needs and ultimately grow.

Housing sits right in the middle of it. Bermudians must be at the centre of our housing policy. Young people should have a realistic chance of leaving their parents, finding somewhere affordable to rent and, if they want to, eventually own a home.

Families need appropriate housing. Our ageing population will need different housing options too.

At the same time, every additional worker requires somewhere to live. If we grow our population without growing our housing supply, we simply put more people in competition for the same homes.

That is not a growth strategy. It’s making the problem worse. Bermuda has to become more serious about how we use our limited land.

We have 21 square miles. We cannot keep building outwards.

There will be places where two or three storeys make sense. But where the location and infrastructure can support six storeys, we should seriously question why we would use scarce land to build only half of what could reasonably be accommodated.

That doesn’t mean putting six-storey buildings in every neighbourhood. It means accepting that greater density has to be part of the answer, particularly in areas suited for it.

We also need more than large developments. A lot of Bermuda’s housing can come a few units at a time.

A Bermudian contractor building four apartments matters. So does someone adding six units to an appropriate property or converting unused space into homes.

We have been prepared to offer concessions to hotel developments because we recognise the wider benefit of getting those projects built. We should examine whether targeted concessions can make smaller housing developments financially viable as well.

This could increase housing supply while creating opportunities for smaller Bermudian construction companies and tradespeople rather than relying only on projects more befitting of the larger developers.

There may also be homes that could be rented today but aren’t.

That brings us to a conversation about landlords and tenants. Too often we begin this discussion by choosing a villain.

Either the landlord is greedy or the tenant is irresponsible. Most are neither.

Most tenants want a decent home at a fair price and will look after it. Most landlords want a responsible tenant who pays the rent and respects their property.

A modern Landlord and Tenant Act has to protect both.

A tenant should have meaningful protection from a landlord who refuses to maintain a property or behaves unfairly. But a landlord also needs a timely way to deal with serious damage or prolonged non-payment of rent.

While a landlord can go months without receiving rent while waiting for a dispute to be resolved, their costs don’t stop. Mortgage, insurance and maintenance costs attached to the rented dwelling still must be paid.

It doesn’t take many experiences like this before some property owners decide it is safer not to rent their unit at all. If that happens, everybody looking for a home loses.

A balanced system isn’t about choosing landlords over tenants or tenants over landlords. It is about creating enough confidence on both sides for the rental market to work.

This is what I mean when I say our biggest problems are connected.

Population affects housing. Housing affects the cost of living. The cost of living affects whether Bermudians stay and whether workers come. Our workforce affects economic growth, and economic growth helps determine whether we can sustain the public services we expect.

Treat any one of those issues on its own and we will keep chasing the consequences somewhere else. Go back to the two people making their decisions.

The young Bermudian deciding whether to come home should be able to see opportunity here and believe they can build a life around it.

The nurse considering Bermuda should be able to look at the salary, housing and cost of living and conclude that coming here will improve their life too.

We need both.

That is the kind of population growth I want Bermuda to pursue — growth that strengthens our economy because Bermuda is a place people choose, not simply because we set a target.

The measure of success isn’t how many people we add. It is whether the Bermuda we are building gives more people, especially Bermudians, a reason to stay.

• Ben Smith is the Leader of the Opposition and the One Bermuda Alliance MP for Smith’s South