Rent Jumped From $41 a Year to $1,000 a Month: A Village of Pensioners Faces Eviction by the Anglican Church

• About 120 Milner Village residents in Couva received eviction notices from the Anglican Church
• Annual rent of $41 was replaced by a demand for $1,000 a month
• Residents were asked to sign contracts giving up claims to the land
• The bishop said the church was regularising tenancy across its lands

Residents of a small Couva community said they were stunned when the Anglican Church, their landlord, told them to leave. Trinidad and Tobago Newsday reported in April 2023 that about 120 people in Milner Village, also known as Milner Town, off Carlos Street and the Southern Main Road, had received eviction notices. Most of them are pensioners.

For years residents had paid the church a token rent of $41 a year. From October 26, 2021, that was replaced with a demand for $1,000 a month, and residents were asked to sign contracts giving up any claim to the property. One resident told Newsday the church had also offered to sell land to residents.

The families’ roots go back a long way. One resident traced the settlement to 1838, when formerly enslaved Africans and indentured labourers occupied the area. Indar Budhoo, 66, said “shockwaves went up my spine” when the notices came. Ann Millington-Hicks called the new rent demand extortion: “To me, that is extortion.” A private valuation put her property at $2.1 million; the church’s valuation was $1.5 million.

Anglican Bishop Claude Berkley said the church “has been striving to regularise tenancy on lands across Trinidad and Tobago (which it owns).” On the Couva notices, he said: “My hunch is that the board has taken a decision to press on with what is procedural.”

The dispute shows the collision between a church trying to put its estate on a modern footing and families who have treated the land as home for generations while paying almost nothing for it.

Jamaica has many communities in the same position, living on church-owned land under old tenancy arrangements at token rents. As Jamaican denominations look harder at their property, the Couva case shows the choice they face: move tenants to market rents and risk evicting elderly families, or offer fair routes to ownership that turn long-time occupiers into titled owners. For residents, it is a reminder to find out who actually owns the land under their house and what their rights are.

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