The Associated Press. 05/27/2001 12:12 am ET.
ABC News
HAVANA (AP) Idania Alonso was brusquely awakened one day when her mattress
was shoved back. A truck had accidentally crashed into her small two-bedroom
house.
That was more than eight years ago, and the smashed-in wall still isn't
repaired, with only a sheet of plastic to keep out the rain and the hot
Caribbean sun.
"Things are going slowly; one has to have patience," Alonso, now
26, said with resignation.
"Money is needed for materials that is if you can find them."
One of the communist government's early actions after taking power in 1959
was to pass a law entitling every Cuban to "decent housing." Rents
were cut in half and citizens were allowed to apply rent payments toward buying
their homes.
But in recent years an acute housing shortage has gripped the island,
especially Havana, which is swelling with job seekers from the provinces while
its old, poorly maintained homes crumble and sometimes disappear.
Cuba has done better on housing than much of Latin America, says Ricardo
Jordan, an urban affairs expert for the United Nations. The Cuban government
says there are more than 3 million homes for a population of 11 million 3.7
people per home.
Alonso, 26, shares the one intact room of the house with her 6-year-old
daughter and her mother. But she doesn't complain.
"Others live in worse conditions," she said, gesturing toward a
neighboring two-story building shared by a family of 19, nine of them children.
Housing remains "an unresolved problem," Vice President Carlos
Lage told The Associated Press in an interview this year.
"Today we are building much more than we were three or four years ago,"
he said, "but it is not enough."
Last year, 45,000 new homes were built in Cuba, and a similar number is
projected for this year, Lage said.
That's less than half what the government estimates is needed.
Government plans from the 1980s to build 100,000 housing units a year were
shelved after the Soviet Union, Cuba's main benefactor, collapsed.
But a new flow of hard currency from tourism has enabled the government to
resume building homes.
Despite the housing shortage, said Lage, "unlike in other countries,
people do not sleep in the street."
The housing stock is shrinking as old buildings become inhabitable for lack
of maintenance, said Jordan, the U.N. expert.
"There is no money for paint ... nor for nails, nor a hammer," he
said.
Many ordinary Cubans have to make do on their own and find housing in the
strangest places.
Vicente Yero, a 44-year-old plumber, lives with his wife and four children
in the entrance of what was once El Rivoli, a two-story movie theater and
restaurant.
After the business went bankrupt and its owner emigrated in 1965, the
building went through several mutations. At one time it was a warehouse for
refrigeration equipment.
At the beginning of the 1990s, people started moving in.
Yero's family set up house in the theater entrance, under white ceilings
decorated with gargoyles, and transformed it into a little apartment: living
room, kitchen and one bedroom divided by a wardrobe.
Nine other families have since moved in to the building.
They now own apartments there, with the permission of housing authorities,
but upkeep means continually wrestling with the bureaucracy.
Building or enlarging a home requires official approval a common rule in
most societies. But Cubans also need permission to sell or rent homes, and the
government is cracking down on lawbreakers.
"There can and must be a battle against illegalities," Lage told a
congress of housing directors in February. "Each brick put in place must be
justified."
Cubans have to have official receipts for building materials, but these
often are nonexistent because the materials are bought on the black market where
they are more abundant and often cost half what the government charges $3 for a
bag of cement instead of $6, for instance.
That's a big difference for people living on small government salaries or
pensions.
Last year, the government seized more than 1,400 housing units for "violations
for renting, illegal buying and selling and other reasons," the Communist
Party daily Granma said after the housing congress.
When a Cuban homeowner receives one of the 20,000 U.S. visas granted
annually to emigrate, the house and its contents, right down to the kitchen
utensils, go to the government.
Shortly after the revolution, many departing families left the servants in
charge of their mansions, thinking the new government wouldn't last.
The government later expropriated those homes. Many of them have become
public buildings: from student dorms to homes for government officials, from
cultural institutions to re-education centers for prostitutes.
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press. | 