Cuba urgently needs to speed up housing construction to bridge social gaps - IPS Cuba

HAVANA, Oct 28.- The Cuban government plans to reduce the high housing deficit in a decade, but dissimilar factors delay the construction and repair of houses that, in addition to providing decent homes, help reduce social gaps.

At the end of 2020, the housing fund in Cuba was 3,946,747 homes, of which around 85% were under individual ownership and the rest state, under different lease modalities or in unlegalized real estate.

With a deficit of almost 863,000 properties, the issue is identified as one of the most critical for improving the quality of life of a large part of the 11.2 million Cuban men and women.

Families with members of three or more generations live together under the same roof, sometimes in overcrowded conditions and in very deteriorated buildings.

The vulnerability of these people increases in this Caribbean island state exposed to the scourge of tropical cyclones that will increase in quantity and intensity due to climate change, scientific forecasts indicate.

In October 2012, Hurricane Sandy damaged more than 300,000 homes in the eastern region of the island, and five years later, the catastrophic Irma, which impacted 12 of the 15 Cuban provinces, affected some 160,000 homes, with almost 14 700 total collapses.

“I tremble when there is heavy rain or they announce a hurricane. I live on the banks of a river and my house has a poor roof. My husband and I are about to retire and with our salaries it is impossible to cover the cost of the repairs,” Carmen Fuentes, a resident of the city of Holguín, 685 kilometers east of Havana, told IPS by telephone.

Official statistics show that 37% of the housing stock in Cuba qualifies as fair or in poor technical construction condition.

Since 2019, the Housing Policy in Cuba came into force, a government plan that proposes to eliminate this deficit in a decade, through the construction of real estate, as well as the sale of materials to rehabilitate, conserve or complete buildings.

The strategy plans to prioritize people affected by cyclones and who have remained for years in shelters or transit communities.

It also includes subsidies and support for those who can take on the construction of their own homes; those who live in precarious conditions -unhealthy neighborhoods, citadels, dirt floors, buildings in danger of imminent collapse- as well as in coastal settlements vulnerable to flooding.

Added to this are recent provisions for the legalization of homes, premises and rooms that comply with urban planning provisions.

Scarce and expensive materials

The policy also contemplates encouraging the local production of recyclable materials and supplies, in addition to what the state and the centrally planned economy contribute.

But according to Raisa Suárez, “Housing Policy is divorced from the availability of materials. The last time I was able to legally access them, in a state-owned business, was in January 2019, restricted to 10 bags of cement -42.5 kilograms-, per person.”

Suárez admitted to IPS that "I have had to resort to the black market to buy materials, because there are never any or they run out immediately," with the aim of rehabilitating her apartment in the municipality of Cerro, one of the 15 in the Cuban capital. .

“Cement and rebar (corrugated steel bars) are very difficult to obtain; somewhat less sand and stone dust. But in the informal market you can find everything at very high prices. It is required to put order in the commercialization, ”she explained.

Suárez gave as an example that a bag of cement in the informal market can cost up to the equivalent of 70 dollars, in a country whose minimum wage is equal to 87 dollars and the maximum is around 400.

Figures from the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) show that last year, Cuba produced just over a million tons of gray cement -76.1% compared to 2019-, but a part is exported.

The data shows that almost all productions in the sector contracted with respect to the previous year.

Authorities attribute the deficits to the US embargo that since 1962 has hindered the purchase of parts and equipment, in addition to preventing credits to modernize an industry that, similar to others on the island, is largely undercapitalized and with low levels of efficiency.

“It is difficult to speed up constructions without materials. During the pandemic, a moratorium on the construction of hotels should have been decreed to advance the housing program,” argued Suárez.

In 2020, just over 32,000 homes were completed in Cuba -11,700 less than in 2019-, while some 100,000 were under construction and almost 61,000 were paralyzed, according to ONEI.

The data shows that more than the equivalent of 171 million dollars were dedicated to business services, real estate and rental activities, including hotel construction, which represented more than 45.6% of investment in the country, compared to 11 .1 million dollars for housing construction, that is, 2.9% of the total.

The green light given at the end of September to the first micro, small or medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), prioritizes those specialized in manufacturing, including the manufacture of construction materials, which could offer an additional boost to housing plans.

Affirmative policies to close the gap

As in other areas marked by the scarcity of materials, bureaucratic procedures and unequal purchasing power, the granting of housing and the sale of materials is not exempt from acts of corruption, theft and poor quality finishes, which raises repeated citizen complaints.

Cuba lacks official statistics on the Poverty Line Index, but studies consider that together with insufficient income, access, ownership and quality of housing, as well as the availability of basic services and optimal habitat conditions, are variables take into account to analyze phenomena such as vulnerability and marginalization.

A recent study recognizes that although the Cuban government has adopted public policies in the last decade to close such gaps, the Afro-descendant population, especially women, start out with greater socio-spatial disadvantages to take advantage of these benefits.

Black and mestizo people are overrepresented in the types of housing and neighborhoods with the greatest construction precariousness, in addition to being the social group that receives the least remittances to assume the construction or repair of real estate, analyzes the research «Vulnerabilities in housing and habitat of black women from Cuba”, published in August.

The investigation of five Cuban researchers was coordinated by the German Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Foundation, together with the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Flacso) and the University of Havana.

In this insular country, 35% of the population declared themselves black or mestizo, during the most recent Population and Housing Census, which dates from 2012.

Black families carry a historical disadvantage in the processes of accumulation of assets such as homes, which makes it difficult for their descendants to inherit one and organize independent life projects, the text reasons.

Among other recommendations, the authors propose intentional affirmative policies towards black women in strategic social sectors -education, health, science-, or those migrants with habitat conditions of greater epidemiological risk and less opportunity to mobilize their own resources.

Since 2019, the government has promoted a policy that grants financing for the construction, rehabilitation, expansion or remodeling of homes to mothers, fathers or legal guardians with three or more children under 17 years of age.

Until last year, almost 5,800 families of the more than 28,600 identified were benefited by this concept, while by 2021 it is projected to conclude or assign 5,658 properties for this destination, according to official information.

Access to housing has also been identified as a factor that affects the low birth rate and fertility that Cuba has been dragging for decades.