FROM
CUBA
Room for rent
Lucas Garve, Fundación por la
Libertad de Expresión
HAVANA, July (www.cubanet.org) - A Canadian
visitor to Havana last spring found lodgings
through the Internet: an air conditioned
room with bath in a spacious apartment on
Empedrado Street. Online, 30 dollars a day
for an attractive room in Old Havana seemed
very reasonable.
Three hours away from Montreal, firmly
planted on tropical reality, the air conditioned
room became a windowless 9 by 12 in an apartment
to be shared with the very portly proprietress,
whose clothes filled the one closet in the
room. All of a sudden, 30 dollars payable
daily to the landlady with the bulldog face
did not seem so very reasonable.
Mercifully, the tropical mirage is deceiving
but accommodating. A few hours later, with
the help of a Cuban friend, he had a whole
apartment to himself, just a few blocks
away, for the same price.
He had entered the world of Rooms for Rent;
an intangible but nevertheless rock-solid
net of Cubans who seek to supplement their
meager incomes by renting out all or part
of houses or apartments, the need for which
they may have outgrown, to foreign visitors
paying in hard currency.
An old woman in Central Havana explains:
"Necessity compels... How are you going
to live without dollars to get what you
need?" she said, adding that she rents
two rooms to tourists. "I was afraid
at the beginning, but, just imagine, I can't
live on my retirement income; my sister
is 87 and bedridden. What do I want this
big house for if not to rent it?"
The mostly illegal rental system has codes,
rules and regulations, and operating protocols,
perfectly understood by all, with not a
word written down. The Canadian's friend
received a 5 dollar per rental-day commission
from the owner of the apartment. Friend
or not, that's the going rate.
Sometimes there may be two or three apartments
in a building whose owners rent them out.
They typically cooperate with each other
to keep occupancy rates up. The other residents
quietly offer the renters services such
as housekeeping, laundry, cooking, or any
imaginable service a tourist might require.
All in the shadow of the law which long
since banned the exploitation of man by
man.
There are 3,300 licensed renters in Havana,
according to an official in the Rental Department
of the Havana Housing Authority. They pay
roughly 300 to 400 dollars a month in taxes
and fees. In the first five months of this
year, 530 lost their licenses for doing
building additions or remodeling without
a permit. In addition, 73 unlicensed renters
saw their housing units confiscated. Still,
the pressures are strong.
Mario, a 70-year-old pensioner, said his
wife was fearful and deterred him from renting.
He has been a widower for the last four
years, and lives alone in an apartment that
he rents for 25 dollars a day. That's 650
pesos a day. His pension is 123 pesos a
month.
Versión
original en español
|