Mi Kas Awor, Mi Casa Ya

Mi Kas Awor, Mi Casa Ya

November 6, 2025

Today’s newspaper once again features glossy photos of new luxury housing projects breaking ground — this time the Lake View Residence at Rif St. Marie. Beautiful images, shining promises, polished headlines.

But let’s keep our feet on the ground: 80% of Curaçaoan households have less than 5,000 guilders to spend, and 30% live below the poverty line.

For that 80% of our population, only castles in the air are being built. Meanwhile, expensive “study trips” to Colombia are organized to “learn” how others do it — often joined by former prime ministers now reinvented as consultants, collecting hefty fees.

There’s always a ribbon-cutting for the cameras, a public celebration of private profit. The same hands that once signed housing policies now sign consultancy contracts — and the circle keeps turning.

For ordinary people, housing has become unaffordable. Houses are no longer homes — not the realization of the modest dream of huisje, boompje, beestje — but investment opportunities. If you don’t have half a million, you don’t count.

Mi kas awor? Mi casa ya. My home here? No — my home is over there.

Miguel Goede