Hurricanes and the housing crisis
From Havana
Hurricanes
and the housing crisis
By
Manuel Alberto Ramy Read Spanish Version
In
recent days I saw motion pictures and still photographs of the damage
Hurricane Paloma wreaked as it swept through the city of Santa Cruz
del Sur in Camagüey province. The images from this municipality —
like those made in the municipality of Amancio, Las Tunas province —
made an impact on me.
The
houses knocked down by Paloma can be added to the houses damaged by
the two previous hurricanes, Gustav and Ike, making a total of 69,000
houses destroyed and about 400,000 damaged to various degrees. And
these must be added to the housing deficit, estimated at 500,000.
More than 300,000 other homes are in urgent need of maintenance,
something that hasn’t happened for years.
The
images show a pile of old lumber, sheets of zinc and planks that
remind one of a shipwreck. It’s as if a naughty boy had blown down an
architectural miniature made of toothpicks. True, no one was killed,
thanks to the foresight and speed of the Civil Defense authorities,
but the question I share with a great many compatriots is how is it
possible for so many houses to remain in such a primitive state?
"To
discover that the marabu weed was taking over the land we had to wait
for President Raúl Castro to ride on the highway to Camagüey,"
a neighbor said to me. Then he asked: "Will it be up to the
hurricanes to reveal the reality of the country’s housing problems?"
According
to the National Office of Statistics (ONE, for its Spanish acronym),
the housing-construction plan has gone this way:
2002:
27,460 homes completed; of these, the private sector built 7,817.
2003:
15,590 homes; of these, 8,272 were erected by private builders.
2004:
15,352 homes, of which 7,057 were built by the private sector.
2005:
39,919 homes; 25,334 of them were built by the private sector.
2006:
111,373 (This figure was questioned as "inflated" by Vice
President Carlos Lage.)
2007:
52,607 homes, of which 30,188 were built by the private sector.
Evidently,
the figures from the most recent years, with the exception of the
questioned figure for 2006, are modest and increasingly closer to the
concrete chances of realization. But at that pace of construction,
the gap will not be bridged, even though our index of population
growth is on a declining curve and the decline is affected by the
fact that there are many instances where three generations live under
the same roof. The figures also reflect an increase in the number of
people who build their homes by the sweat of their own brow.
For
this year, the official target is about 51,000 homes. We only know
about the problems found in the process, such as delay in the
paperwork, lack of manpower for construction, disorganization among
the organizations that distribute the materials, shortages of
materials and lack of transportation.
For
every explanation, more explanations are given. Each participating
sector or level has an arsenal as great as the governmental
structure, which is bloated and tends to replicate itself from top to
bottom. The latter characteristic should be analyzed and reorganized
by the political / administrative divisions. The economic reality and
the environmental changes in the various regions of the country seem
to demand it.
Meanwhile,
the Cuban citizen continues to look for (and finds) housing space he
feared had disappeared. On the other hand, the difficulties in
repairing the existing dwellings continue to grow. A great many
residents of Havana are extremely worried that a Category 2, 3 or 4
hurricane will hit the capital. "Half the city will have to be
shoveled away," commented an ice-cream vendor outside the
National Capitol Building.
Many
people point out that the need for new homes and the urgent need to
maintain the existing homes are a subject that has been around for
years and "cannot be attributed to the Special Period,"
most of the 1990s, when the country suffered the worst economic
crisis in its history. I researched data at the National Office of
Statistics and learned that in 1985, when economic relations with the
Soviet Union and the socialist camp were excellent, only 41,170 new
homes were built.
The
question is worth asking and pondering: If farm cooperatives have
proved to be efficient forms of production, why shouldn’t
construction cooperatives be encouraged? Why not make bank loans
available for such purposes? In one of his final writings, Lenin
ranked cooperative association as the system closest to socialism.
President Raúl Castro himself, in one of his speeches, saw the
existence of different forms of property and production as not
basically contrary to the system.
The
combination of man and house is as old as mankind. A home is family
— a basic cell — a safe haven and modest but secure dwelling. It is
the chief and best environment for the transmission of values that
are essential for a healthy coexistence and for dealing with the
challenges that loom subtler and more sophisticated in the times
ahead. To live in a shelter is preferable to living under a bridge or
bedding down every night in a mall or hallway; that’s undeniable.
However, a shelter cannot be the final destination of thousands of
people — some of whom have spent two or three years under such
conditions. Promiscuity and an extended "temporariness"
without an end in sight break up families, shatter values and
propitiate bad habits.
Manuel
Alberto Ramy is Havana bureau chief for Radio Progreso Alternativa
and editor of Progreso Semanal, the Spanish-language version of
Progreso Weekly.
