This is the second in a three-part series on the housing crisis. It examines the Government’s response to the crisis

Against the scale of the housing crisis documented in Part I, any fair assessment of the Progressive Labour Party government's housing record must begin from a place of acknowledged effort and then proceed to an honest reckoning with the results, because the results, measured against the need, are inadequate.

The Government's flagship housing initiative of this parliamentary term has been the Bermudiana Beach Residences, formerly the Grand Atlantic, formerly envisioned as affordable housing. When the project was officially declared open in April 2025, Zane DeSilva confirmed that the development's 94 units were available at rents ranging from $3,000 to $7,000 a month. That is not affordable housing. That is luxury rental accommodation that Bermudians struggling on median incomes cannot access.

By November 2025, I had established through parliamentary questions that only five of more than 90 units had been rented to Bermudians. My response then was measured but damning: "With over 300 people on waiting lists at BHC and 1,100 people homeless or facing homelessness as identified by the charity Home, this is unacceptable."

The Bermudiana Beach saga is instructive not just as a policy failure but as a symptom of a structural problem in how the Government approaches housing. A building purchased by the public through the Bermuda Housing Corporation, originally envisioned for affordable housing, then converted to a Hilton boutique hotel concept in 2018 at a cost of approximately $23 million, then reconverted again, has gone through multiple incarnations and tens of millions of dollars of public expenditure to produce alleged “affordable” tenancies to guest workers. It is difficult to reconcile that outcome with the language of urgency.

Last month, I observed that the Government had "begun structured exploration of options for the future of the Bermudiana Beach Resort and Grand Atlantic site with the clear objective of returning this public asset to productive use for Bermudians over time" and also pointedly observed: "The OBA has been talking about this for years."

The OBA has also been talking for years about repurposing empty government-owned school buildings. In April 2025, I said I was "stunned" that the former Bishop Spencer School building was being leased to a private business rather than converted to transitional housing, emergency housing, or a seniors' home.

The Government's Housing Strategy mentions exploring school repurposing, but, as I noted in reviewing the February Budget, "there is no mention of it in the Budget“. Of the estimated 1,100 Bermudians homeless or facing homelessness, I observed: "I am sure a safe space to lay their head at night in quickly repurposed buildings would be welcome."

The Government's response to the crisis in 2026 Budget terms has been significant in dollar terms. Zane DeSilva, the Minister of Housing, secured more than $40 million for housing capital work, and the Government has promised a draft Affordable Housing Strategy 2025-2035.

On both counts, our reaction has not been simple opposition but constructive challenge. In fact, I congratulated the minister on the allocation. But our critique is substantive. A budget without a plan is backwards governance.

As I wrote in The Royal Gazette last month: "What the minister is asking us to do is accept an allocation of money in the tens of millions of dollars of public money on the back of a plan that the public have not yet seen … Bermudians are the shareholders, and yet there is no published plan."

The Chamber of Commerce's research team, working in a non-partisan capacity, arrives at an identical point, the data is imperfect, solutions require a plan, and currently "no plan exists that would address the problem“.

The modular and precast housing announcement is another case study in the gap between energy and detail. The Government announced 11 expandable containers and modular homes to be installed within months as a pilot scheme to address BHC waiting lists. By last month, the language had quietly shifted from "expandable container homes" to "precast" and "modular" homes. I noted, “that the word [expandable] container homes has fallen out of favour before even being assembled, and I understand the Chinese-built [expandable] container homes will not be at the forefront of the plans". In fact, the minister took great offence at me missing out the word “expandable”, so I did him a favour and added it in brackets. I’m not sure what the big deal is; after all they are still container homes!

The OBA is not opposed to modular construction in principle in respect of the hundreds of homes apparently on the way. Our critique is that the public deserve to know the procurement source, the durability standards, the long-term costs, the planning and building approval processes, and the site plans before budgetary approval, not after press conferences.

Where the Government and the OBA genuinely agree and where it is important to say so clearly is in several substantive areas. The City of Hamilton Plan 2025, which eliminates rigid citywide height limits and introduces a discretion-based framework for taller buildings, won bipartisan support in the House of Assembly. This alignment is significant because building higher in Hamilton is not a peripheral idea.

As the chamber calculates, for every drop of 0.02 in average household size, approximately 270 additional dwellings are needed, and that demand is growing. Vertical development in the City, as I have argued since 2023, is one of the few tools that can produce meaningful unit numbers without placing additional pressure on Bermuda's constrained land base: "By building higher we can create more housing options, including affordable housing, and reduce the pressure on our natural environment."

Both parties also recognise the role of the Landlord-Tenant Act as a structural impediment to housing supply. In my column last month, I called explicitly to push forward the Act's reform, which has been in preparation across multiple government departments for years. The Chamber of Commerce polling on Landlord-Tenant Act amendments showed considerable public appetite for updating landlord protections and streamlining the eviction process, while preserving tenant rights.

The Plan to End Homelessness, co-sponsored by the PLP-aligned government, makes virtually identical recommendations, including a "private renters Bill to enshrine rights to both renters and landlords" and a rent-ready training programme to reduce tenancy failure rates. On these points, the philosophical consensus is clear, even if the political will to finalise legislation has been absent.

The Government's own 2023-24 Budget allocated nearly $26 million for services provided by Financial Assistance, Corrections, the Hospitals Board, the BHC, and Child and Family Services, services whose costs are, as the Plan to End Homelessness documents, substantially driven by the failure to house people adequately in the first place. The plan states simply: "Ending homelessness also saves taxpayers money." A correctional inmate costs approximately $80,000 per annum to house. A single hospital night without addressing root causes runs approximately $1,000.

The chamber documents the cascading hospital bed crisis: as of December 2024, 42 of 90 hospital beds were occupied by medically stable patients with nowhere to go, patients who, on average, were 76 years old and simply had no housing to discharge into. This is not a housing problem in isolation. It is a healthcare crisis, a social services crisis and an economic crisis, compounding simultaneously.

The OBA's thoughts, shared by the chamber and by Home, is that the crisis requires not just funding but structural reform, private sector activation, legislative clarity and genuine transparency about timelines and targets.

The Government's instinct appears to be incremental: 48 new units by late 2026, a ten-year strategy not yet published, and modular pilots whose specifications remain opaque. In a crisis that demands, at a minimum, 2,500 additional households just to meet current demographic needs, those increments are necessary but insufficient.

• Michael Fahy is the Shadow Minister for Home Affairs, Housing and Municipalities, and the MP for Pembroke South West