Living in a Shelter Comes to Seem Normal

Living in a Shelter Comes to Seem Normal / Odelin Alfonso Torna
Posted on September 16, 2013

HAVANA, Cuba , September, www.cubanet.org – For ten years, the issue of
housing has topped Cuba's social problems. The state, unable to meet
demand in the medium and long term, commits to offering its abandoned
and unrepairable properties. Families of victims, calling on their
meager resources and their own efforts, are divided out among
warehouses, factories, schools, offices and even in abandoned police
headquarters.

Offices of an old abandoned factory in danger of collapse, located in
Cuervo road in the Havana municipality of Arroyo Naranjo, were
previously assigned, provisionally, to three families of victims. In the
warehouse of the dismantled La Ideal cannery, in the capital
municipality of San Miguel del Padron, shelters other families by
whatever means possible. The San Francisco de Paula railway station, in
the same municipality, has served as a "temporary" roof for three
families since the end of the '90s.

These spaces donated by the State already existed, to a lesser extent,
before 2006, the year that Fidel Castro delegated his powers for reasons
of health. Already since 1996, part of the International School of
Sports and Physical Culture (EIFD), in the Cotorro municipality, was
enabled for dozens of victim families to temporarily stay overnight.
These families and their descendents are still living in EIDF.

Transition communities like Gambute, Mantilla, El Comodoro and Martín
Pérez, all in the capital, have been operating for more than fifteen years.

According to the ousted vice president Carlos Lage, 2006 ended with
111,373 housing units built, 78,833 more than were constructed in 2011
(32,540). Data provided by the National Housing Institute shows that
Cuba must build between 60,000 and 70,000 housing units. However, the
State is building some 16,000 while between 8,000 and 10,000 are built
through private efforts. The State insists that its priority is to
"solve [the problem of] those sheltered because of collapses."

Does Havana, receiving more than 20,000 new residents each year,
especially from the interior of the country, record in its annual
housing construction plan the spaces and "transition communities" that
are offered each year to victims and social cases? Looking at the
nationwide housing stock of more than 3 million units, according to the
National Statistics Office (ONE) 61% are in good condition, and the rest
are "regular" or "bad." Annual demand is predicted to be twice the plan
figures for construction and repair of housing units.

Oris Silvia Fernández, president of the National Housing Institute,
interviewed for the new news show "Cuba says," argued, "We have a very
complicated situation in the country's capital because we have 5,471
families in shelters, and we have to say that there are other families
who live in critical buildings with rather complicated structural
situations in the capital, and we are talking of a total requirement of
28,000 homes."

According to the ONE, the Cuban capital has more then 6,000 tenements
and former mansions and old houses subdivided into rooms, plus 46
shantytowns — among them the transition communities — on the periphery,
where more than 18,000 people live. All of them, and the new generations
that come along, have been waiting for more than twenty years for
dignified housing. However, statistically, are these cases resolved by
the government?

For the long list of victims, offers of land by the State do not seem to
be on the table. And despite Decree Law 217 (1997), which regulates the
flow of migrants to the capital, the arrival of emigrants from the
eastern part of the country increases the total housing needs in the
capital.

Hurricanes and tropical storms over the last ten years have affected
more than one million homes. Hurricane Sandy, which hit eastern Cuban in
October 2012, most affected the provinces of Holguin, Santiago de Cuba
and Guantanamo, causing the complete destruction of 22,396 homes. As of
the first half of the year, 20,710 remained unaddressed. From previous
cyclones — I'm referring to Gustave, Ike and Paloma — 40,000 totally
collapsed homes remain unaddressed, according to Silvia Fernández.

The eastern province of Santiago de Cuba has a housing stock of 329,191
homes, with 40% in fair or poor condition. With this as a starting
point, Hurricane Sandy affected 171,000 households, and only 44% of the
victims have resolved their situation.

Given the low production of materials and a government program to build
housing that does not exceed 20,000 annual units, temporary solutions
appear necessary It remains to be known if this is a permanent state.

By Odelín Alfonso Torna — odelinalfonso@yahoo.com

12 September 2013

Source: "Living in a Shelter Comes to Seem Normal / Odelin Alfonso Torna
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