From “Forgotten Families” to Government: Where Is the NDP’s Pole Yard Timeline?
The NDP made Pole Yard its cause in opposition and promised transparent timelines and genuine consultation. In office, its housing minister has confirmed relocation and scrapped the single-site plan. The timeline, the new sites and the consultation are still missing.
For years, the people of Pole Yard at Arnos Vale were part of the New Democratic Party’s case against the former Unity Labour Party government. NDP politicians spoke about their living conditions, questioned why residents lacked basic services, and accused the ULP of promising relocation without delivering. Months before the November 27, 2025 general election, NDP candidate Kaschaka Cupid went further and called them the “forgotten families of Pole Yard.” Today the NDP is the government, and the question is no longer only what the ULP failed to do. It is what the NDP will now do, and by when.
A Community That Has Waited Decades
Pole Yard is not new. Searchlight reported as far back as 2011 that the informal settlement had already existed for more than 20 years and had been without pipe-borne water since it was established, with community standpipes arranged only after residents lost access to water from the nearby Public Works Department office. It sits at Arnos Vale, beside the former E.T. Joshua Airport lands, now home to the US$80 million acute referral hospital and central to national development planning.
The NDP Took Pole Yard to Parliament
In May 2019, then NDP Senator Kay Bacchus-Baptiste raised the residents’ plight in Parliament, asking why, in 2019, people there still had no electricity, and when the government would provide it even if they were eventually to be relocated. Then Housing Minister Montgomery Daniel confirmed the government was not planning to permanently connect the settlement to the grid because relocation was anticipated. That gave the NDP a powerful issue: why should families live without ordinary amenities while waiting year after year for a move that never came? It was a fair question then. It is a fair question now.
The ULP Made the Promise, and the Delays
The former government cannot escape its own record. By 2022 and 2023 the ULP had publicly committed to relocating Pole Yard as Arnos Vale was redeveloped. In April 2023, then minister Carlos James said substantial development inside the settlement was being held back precisely because relocation was expected, and put it plainly: the residents had to be relocated, and the government would find land for new homes. In January 2024, then Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves said long-standing residents would have to be resettled, and warned that a cutoff had been set so that people moving in after the plans were announced could not claim the same benefits.
At the October 2024 groundbreaking for the acute referral hospital, then West St. George MP Curtis King announced that the search for land was over and the site was at an advanced stage of preparation, while admitting it had taken a long time to find. By October 2025, Gonsalves said no single site was large enough and residents would instead be spread across three locations, which were not publicly identified.
So the record is not in dispute. The ULP made the promise, took years trying to keep it, and the NDP was entitled to criticize the delay. But criticism sets a standard, and when the critic becomes the government, the standard follows it into office.
Then Came Kaschaka Cupid
On August 24, 2025, Kaschaka Cupid, then the NDP candidate for West St. George, visited Pole Yard and launched one of the sharpest attacks on the former government over the community. He said more than 40 families had been left in limbo and accused the ULP of treating residents as political pawns. Then he made his own commitment: an NDP government, he said, would prioritize the dignified relocation of these families, with transparent timelines and genuine consultation with residents, so they would no longer be the forgotten families of West St. George.
Those words were not spoken 20 years ago. They were spoken about three months before the NDP won. In September 2025, Cupid folded housing into a formal seven-point programme for the constituency and again named Pole Yard. This was not an incidental campaign line. The NDP made it part of its argument for change.
The Election Changed Who Must Answer
On November 27, 2025, the NDP won the general election. Cupid took the West St. George seat and now sits in Cabinet. The people who had spent years demanding answers for Pole Yard were now the people in a position to give them.
To Its Credit, the Government Has Begun to Speak
And it has. On May 20, 2026, the St. Vincent Times reported that Minister of Housing Andrew John had confirmed the administration was moving ahead with relocating Pole Yard, which he said had been deemed unsuitable for continued habitation. John revealed that about four acres at Green Hill had previously been identified to resettle the entire community, but said his government was re-evaluating that single-site approach, concerned that moving everyone to one location could uproot the community and reproduce the same conditions elsewhere. He signaled a preference for a more distributed relocation, and said the government was also examining other troubled areas, such as Bentick Square in Kingstown.
That is real movement, and it should be acknowledged. A minister has confirmed the plan is alive and has given a reason for changing course. This is not a story about a government that has said nothing.
But Confirming Is Not the Same as Delivering
Saying that relocation will happen is not the same as telling families when and where. On the very questions the NDP said mattered most, the account is still incomplete. If Green Hill is being re-evaluated, which sites will replace it, and are they identified or still to be found? What is the timeline the party promised would be transparent? When were the genuine consultations Cupid pledged actually held, and what were residents told? And when will anyone move?
Nine months into the term, and three months after Minister John’s statement, those answers are not on the public record. This is where the NDP’s own standard applies. The party told Pole Yard residents they deserved transparency. It promised transparent timelines and genuine consultation. Accountability for delivering them now sits with two people: Kaschaka Cupid, the member of Parliament who made the promise, and Andrew John, the minister who holds the housing portfolio.
The critic is now the government. The standard follows it into office.
Six Questions for the Government
- Now that the four-acre Green Hill site is being re-evaluated, which relocation sites has the government identified to replace it, and are they secured?
- How many Pole Yard households currently qualify for government-assisted relocation?
- What type of housing or land assistance will each qualifying family receive?
- What formal consultations have taken place with residents since the NDP took office on November 27, 2025?
- What is the date by which the government expects the relocation to begin, and to be completed?
- Will the distributed approach Minister John described keep the community together or divide it, and how were residents consulted on that choice?
The people of Pole Yard should not matter only when a party is seeking office. They are Vincentian families who have spent decades waiting for certainty about where they will live. Kaschaka Cupid once called them the forgotten families of Pole Yard. His government now has the power, and the responsibility, to make sure those words no longer describe them.
The Opposition demanded answers. The Opposition made promises. The Opposition became the government. Now the government must publish the timeline.
Vincypowa News · Power to the People