I have spent the last decade working in places most people only write opinion pieces about.
In Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa, I helped launch platforms that brought transparency and efficiency to e-commerce in one of the world’s most complex markets. Today, in the Dominican Republic, I am building a sustainable real estate model using a Community Land Trust, designed to protect land, offer affordable access to locals and keep long-term ecological balance.
Along the way I have noticed something. The moment you start building something better, the backlash rarely comes from those with better solutions. It usually comes from those with none at all.
We agree on the problem
I share many of the concerns raised by activists, scholars and critics:
- Unchecked tourism erodes local culture. Look at what happened in Tulum, Bali or Phuket.
- Land speculation displaces communities.
- Foreign capital, without safeguards, becomes extraction.
These are serious, well-documented critiques, and a foreign founder who dismisses them deserves the suspicion he gets. The honest starting point is that foreign money has often hurt the places it entered. My disagreement is not with the diagnosis. It is with the conclusion that the only responsible option is to do nothing, because “nothing” is not neutral. Land does not stay untouched while we debate. It gets sold, usually to whoever offers the most and asks the fewest questions.
What building against those problems looks like
I do not only speak about these problems. I have structured around them:
- We established a legally binding Community Land Trust to keep land in Dominican hands.
- We created financing models that allow locals to buy land affordably and responsibly.
- We partnered with Dominican lawyers, families and professionals.
- We invested six figures into legal, financial and environmental compliance.
- We built our projects on reforestation, conservation and long-term value, not short-term gain.
What the evidence says about land trusts
Community land trusts are not an untested idea. The most cited study comes from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. It surveyed 42 community land trusts in the United States holding 2,173 owner-occupied mortgages, and found that at the end of 2009 conventional prime loans were 4.3 times more likely than land trust mortgages to be seriously delinquent, and 5.9 times more likely to be in foreclosure. Land trusts also cured or helped cure 51% of the mortgages that ever became seriously delinquent (Thaden, Outperforming the Market, 2010). The explanation was stewardship: pre-purchase education, post-purchase support and early intervention by an organization with a long-term stake in the family staying in the home.
I want to be careful about what that proves. These were affordable-housing trusts in the US in a mortgage crisis, which is not the same as a Caribbean land trust mixing conservation, tourism and investors. It does show that the underlying principle works: when ownership is structured around stewardship instead of resale, outcomes for families get better. Whether our model delivers it in the Dominican Republic is for the results, and for independent scrutiny, to show.
Outrage is not a plan
The most vocal critics often live abroad, in cities with functioning infrastructure and global mobility. They speak about injustice from a distance and call for preservation without addressing who gets left behind when nothing is developed. Terms like “outsider”, “white savior” or “colonizer” are repeated like mantras. They are not arguments. They shut a conversation down instead of improving it.
I understand the emotion, and history explains a lot. But emotion alone will not build affordable homes, change laws or create opportunity. That takes structure, partnerships and capital, applied ethically and transparently. It also takes accepting hits from people who will never take the risks themselves.
How to hold me to account
The strongest answer to criticism is not a better argument, it is a better scoreboard. I’d welcome critics testing these commitments against what we publish: the share of units reserved for locals, the green space preserved, the waste, water and biodiversity KPIs, and who sits on the investment committee. If we fall short of our own numbers, say so loudly. That is what accountability is for.
I am not here for praise or permission. I am here to build with integrity, with local participation, and with those ready to move from talk to execution. I do not expect agreement from everyone. But I do not take criticism from people who are not offering alternatives. If you have a better model, I would like to see it.
The goal is not applause. The goal is outcomes. The work continues, and the results will speak louder than the noise ever could.
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