Re: 'People's Camping' on the Upswing, Says Cuban President
- From: "PL" <pl.nospam@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 21 May 2006 09:34:28 GMT
"Barry Schier" <bschier@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1148192289.822424.263780@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
We have the U.S. version of "people's camping" in Los Angeles:
Estimates of the homeless population of Los Angeles County (where I
live) are estimated 70,000 to 90,000 people. There are many of those
"cardboard condos" literally in the shadow of some downtown Los Angeles
buildings.
Hurricane victims complain
they are still homeless
HAVANA, January 20 (Fara Armenteros, UPECI / www.cubanet.org) -
Residents of La Coloma, Pinar del Río province, who were hit hard by two
consecutive hurricanes in September last year complained to authorities
about the delays in rebuilding their homes.
Residents who lost their homes complained to visiting government and
Communist Party officials. They said they had been promised that new housing
would be built and that their stay in temporary shelters would be brief.
Versión original en español
CubaNet does not require sole rights from its contributors. We
authorize the reproduction and distribution of this article as long as the
source is credited.
http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y03/jan03/22e3.htm
Contrast that with socialist-oriented Cuba. There's a billboard that I
saw when was in Cuba, which (roughly translated) declared:
"200,000,000 children go to bed homeless each night. Not one of them
lives in Cuba."
which is of course another lie.
Despite guarantees, homelessness creeps into Cuba
A couple prepares to spend a night on a park bench with their toddler in
Havana
June 6, 2000
Web posted at: 10:13 p.m. EDT (0213 GMT)
From Havana Bureau Chief Lucia NewmanHAVANA (CNN) -- For Cubans, decent housing is guaranteed in the
constitution. But the state has been unable to cope with a housing
shortage that has been building for decades.
On a recent night in a small Havana park, a couple and their toddler
prepare to spend their fifth night on the park bench.
"I'm desperate, with a 2-year-old daughter and with no place to sleep,
spending the whole night out on the street," Lidia Perez said.
Dianeya Ninterian, from Colon, Matanzas, lost her home in a hurricane
two years ago. She tells a similar story.
"I've slept in the bus terminals with my two daughters; at the home of
friends one day here, one day there," Ninterian said. "Last week I spent
24 hours sitting with my children at the entrance of the local Communist
Party office, waiting for them to give me some kind of solution to my
problem."
Though these cases may be the exception rather than the rule, they
illustrate a growing breakdown in the Cuban social system.
In Havana, the problem has reached crisis levels. The Cuban capital is
home to 2.2 million people, 20 percent of the nation's population on 1
percent of Cuban territory.
"This is a socialist country, where we should receive help, where the
state must give us a hand, even if it's to give us the means to build
with our own hands," said Miguel, a Havana resident who would not
provide his last name.
Despite new housing developments, the shortage of homes is too acute to
give many Cubans the shelter they are promised
Until two years ago, more buildings were collapsing from lack of repair
and decay than those being built.
And though the government is planning to build 30,000 new homes, 60,000
will have to be demolished because they are beyond repair.
Exacerbating the housing squeeze has been the ongoing trend of people
moving to the Cuban capital. According to figures from the Cuban
government, during the 1950s, the annual rate of migration to Havana was
between 20,000 and 25,000 people. In 1959, when President Fidel Castro
came to power, that number increased to 43,000.
Between 1965 and 1990, Cuba managed to regulate the migratory flow
towards the capital to about 10,000 people a year.
But the alarm bells began to ring again in the mid-1990s, when the net
internal migration rate for the capital went from 13,000 in 1990, to
17,000 in 1994, and reached more than 28,000 in 1996.
Housing authorities admit it is an uphill battle.
"There are many accumulated problems," said Mario Cabello, president of
the Cuban Housing Institute. "... In Havana only 53 percent of homes are
in good condition; before it was 47 percent, but it's such a discreet
improvement that the population doesn't notice it."
The shortage of homes is so daunting authorities keeping statistics of
the need. And no matter what the constitution states, the government
admits the country does not have nearly enough building materials or
manpower to give everyone the home they have been promised.
http://www.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/americas/06/06/cuba.housing/
"Government Involves Physicians In Plan To Eradicate Homeless
CIENFUEGOS, June 14 (Sunset Nogueras Rofes) - According to medical sources
who refuse to be identified for fear or prosecution, the Assembly of the
Popular Power in this municipality intends to use family physicians in an
attempt to solve the growing number of homeless people that tarnish the
image that the Communist government projects of Cuban society.
To this end, some weeks ago the president of the Municicpal Assembly of the
Popular Power in Cienfuegos, a city in south-central Cuba, Remberto de la
Hoz, held meetings in several medical offices in the city in which he
informed the physicians about the matter. The government official urged the
physicians to end once and for all with the sad reality, because the
province is among the first in the country as far as homeless people is
concerned.
The Communist leader added that it is the duty of physicians to "persuade
the families of the various neighboryhoods to give shelter and food to the
homeless so that they will abandon the streets."
At the end of these meetings Mr. de la Hoz said: "Gentlemen, you cannot
imagine the number of homeless people in the streets. By orders of the
Revolutionary government, you are the ones who have to take a step forward."
Nobody replied.
The social chaos generated by the misgovernance of the island is
demonstrated by the words of its representative in that region of the
country. It is evident the Socialist State and its dependencies are
incapable of providing a home for those without shelter.
Social derelicts of every type can be found anywhere in this city.
Nonetheless, the official version is that these are crazy or antisocial
persons. When this unique initiative fails, let's hope the government of
Cuba won't appeal to a "police solution."
http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y00/jun00/19e3.htm
FROM CUBA
To Be Homeless in Havana
Manuel David Orrio, Cooperativa de Periodistas Independientes
LA HABANA, julio - Havana divers are called that because they dive; not
under water, but in garbage bins, looking for food scraps, discarded shoes
and old clothes.
The divers are a Cuban version of the New York homeless. Due to psychiatric
problems or alcoholism, they live in dark and smelly corners, abandoned to
their fate and with the complicity of the National Institute of Housing.
Some even have a pension, the extent of which is more a euphemism than
social assistance.
Some divers live between misery and poetry. The Banana, for example, an
institution among Havana divers, is a mental incompetent who loves dogs and
who used to be a photographer of some renown. On one ocassion, he decided he
had to save the Cuban flags he found in garbage bins. He simply wanted them
burnt, as a sign of respect, but both those on the Left and those on the
Right decided the whole affair could be embarrasing and the matter was swept
under.
As with The Banana, other neighborhoods sprout divers with their own
personalities. A man finds it hard to renounce his uniqueness. So, in the
Chinese Quarter, in Old Havana, there is a diver who deserves full first and
last name: The Box Diver.
To understand his style, one would have to understand a gastronomic
peculiarity of Havana. Whereas in any other area of the city, fast food
means pizza, in the Chinese Quarter it means a Box.
Basically, the Box contains a complete meal: rice and beans, some pork,
maybe fried bananas and some salad greens. Curiously, the Chinese in Cuba
have never shied away from Cuban food. The Box can cost anywhere between 10
and 20 pesos, depending on quality.
At sundown, the Box Diver finds himself a Box; not the 10 or 20 peso warm,
full one, but an empty, used one that he then carries in his left hand. With
that, he forages through the neighborhood, collecting what he finds in his
Box. Later, sitting in the park, he'll parsimoniously consume the contents.
I have tried to approach the Box Diver. I have even tried to take his
photograph, all to no avail. He knows me, and he knows that I belong to the
same street geography that he does, where they call me, in spite of myself,
The Journalist.
Maybe in these Cuban times, at the threshold of the Third Millenium, there
should be someone like the Box Diver. And, maybe, also, there should be
someone to record his reality, to record his silent witness.
http://holocaust.fiu.edu/~fcf/tobeho.html
Housing authority destroys home of homeless woman and daughter
CIEGO DE ÁVILA, Cuba - 31 May (Roberto Pérez, Agencia Patria /
www.cubanet.org) - When Oralia Carcasés failed to obtain a building permit
before the construction material for her new home started to deteriorate,
she decided to build the house without one.
Last week a brigade from the Housing Institute in the municipality of Rafael
Freyre, in Holguín province, destroyed the house, over the protests of the
owner and her neighbors.
Independent journalist Liannys Meriño Aguilera said the building permit was
held up by bureaucratic red tape and that Carcasés decided she could wait no
longer. She and her young daughter had been living in a lean-to.
http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y05/jun05/01e2.htm
Why doesn't the government help the
homeless?
HAVANA, November 1 (María Elena Rodríguez, Cuba-Verdad) - Homeless people
who scavenge in garbage bins for food or some item they might be able to use
are routinely fined by police and made to return the refuse they have picked
up to the bins.
Lately there seems to have been an increase in the number of scavengers, who
operate at night and can be seen sleeping in the porches of buildings in the
daytime. The increased activity has led to turf fights, as the scavengers
claim a propietary interest in a particular garbage bin and find it
necessary to fight off poachers.
Residents question the government's objective in imposing fines, arguing
that it would make more sense to help them. Others say the government doesn'
t want to admit "the social, economic and moral conditions to which the
country has sunk," as one man said who didn't want to be identified for fear
of losing his license as a self-employed tradesman.
Versión original en español
CubaNet does not require sole rights from its contributors. We authorize the
reproduction and distribution of this article as long as the source is
credited.
http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y00/nov00/03e1.htm
Hurricane victims complain
they are still homeless
HAVANA, January 20 (Fara Armenteros, UPECI / www.cubanet.org) -
Residents of La Coloma, Pinar del Río province, who were hit hard by two
consecutive hurricanes in September last year complained to authorities
about the delays in rebuilding their homes.
Residents who lost their homes complained to visiting government and
Communist Party officials. They said they had been promised that new housing
would be built and that their stay in temporary shelters would be brief.
Versión original en español
CubaNet does not require sole rights from its contributors. We
authorize the reproduction and distribution of this article as long as the
source is credited.
http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y03/jan03/22e3.htm
Los sin tierra": mendigos que
deambulan por la capital de Cuba
LA HABANA, 19 de octubre (Jorge Cordero, Agencia Fraternal de Periodistas
"Carlos Piñeiro") - Emigrantes del interior del país, llamados popularmente
"los sin tierra", se han convertido en mendigos y deambulan por diferentes
zonas de los municipios capitalinos Cerro, Centro Habana y Habana Vieja.
Los sin tierra, para tratar de alimentarse y vestirse en algún modo, venden
objetos que encuentran en los vertederos de desperdicios.
Paradójicamente, la razón por la cual estas personas emigraron hacia la
capital de Cuba fue la esperanza de mejorar su precario nivel de vida.
Muchos de estos frustrados emigrantes internos sobreviven sin cartilla de
racionamiento y les persigue la posibilidad de ser deportados hacia sus
lugares de origen por un decreto ley que impide a los cubanos residir en la
capital de su país.
Esta información ha sido transmitida por teléfono, ya que el gobierno de
Cuba no permite al ciudadano cubano acceso privado a Internet.
CubaNet no reclama exclusividad de sus colaboradores, y autoriza la
reproducción de este material, siempre que se le reconozca como fuente.
http://cubanet.org/CNews/y00/oct00/20a14.html
Slum removal will leave 20 families homeless
HAVANA, December 2 (Reinaldo Cosano Alén / www.cubanet.org) - Twenty
low-income families will be evicted from the decrepit homes they built by
orders of the East Havana Housing Authority, which then plans to demolish
the houses.
The ramshackle structures, known locally as Camino del Tejar, near
Guanabo beach, were built by their occupants, little by little, with found
materials.
"I came home and I found this," said one occupant, Meinardo Chaveco.
"I was building houses in central Cuba for people who suffered the damages
of hurricane Michelle."
Chaveco said he had been fined twice due to his improvised housing
arrangements. The first fine, of 800 pesos, is being taken out of his
monthly salary of 162.25 pesos a month. He still hasn't paid it off and now
he has been fined 1,000 pesos, along with the eviction and demolition order.
"We all work," he said, referring to the other families who live at
Camino del Tejar, "we are all working people, and everytime we come home we
are afraid we are going to find smoke where our houses now stand," he said.
All the families say the Housing Authority wants to knock their homes
down, but hasn't made any effort to find them alternative housing.
http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y02/dec02/04e2.htmSpecial report: Housing
crisis on island literally killing some Cubans
By Vanessa Bauza & Tim Collie
Sun-Sentinel
December 15, 2001
HAVANA -- It was 1 a.m. and about a dozen families were sleeping when the
brittle beams of their condemned Central Havana building began to collapse.
Scrambling from their beds, 5-year-old Adelkyis Peñalver and his
grandmother, Hilda Rosa Rivero, were trapped in the middle of the building.
Rivero covered her grandson's body with her own in a last attempt to save
him.
It was not enough. Adelkyis and Rivero were found dead in the rubble nearly
21 hours later as rescue crews cleared the site.
Adelkyis was the youngest of six people who were killed in one of the
deadliest derrumbes, or building collapse, in recent years. Four others were
seriously injured. The accident on Dec. 5 highlights what many Cubans say is
one of their most persistent problems: people living in dangerously
dilapidated buildings because of a critical housing shortage.
It is estimated that Cuba needs about 100,000 new homes a year to keep up
with demand. Since the island's post-Soviet economic crisis, however, new
construction has decreased mostly for lack of materials. Last year about
45,000 new homes were built on the island.
Hurricane Michelle, which roared through Cuba's agricultural heartland last
month, exacerbated the problem by damaging or destroying an estimated
450,000 homes.
Old Havana, the city's historic quarter, is undergoing a massive restoration
largely geared toward rescuing its architectural treasures and attracting
tourist dollars. But a short walk away, in the gritty streets of Central
Havana, collapsed and condemned buildings, some inhabited, are a common
sight. More crumble each time there are heavy rains.
One of the revolutionary government's first acts in the early 1960s was to
pass the Urban Reform Law. The law reduced rents on homes and expropriated
houses abandoned by fleeing Cuban exiles, in many cases offering them to
destitute city dwellers.
Lack of materials
The Cuban government has long declared that the island has no homeless
people and its socialist system provides housing for all. However, the
chronic lack of construction materials means many Havana homes built in the
early 1900s have been badly neglected.
This has forced thousands of families into temporary housing, which can
range from a vacant storefront in Havana to a new single-room efficiency on
the outskirts of town. Once absorbed into the housing department's tangled
bureaucracy, many say it can take years to find permanent housing.
Department officials did not respond to repeated requests for interviews,
saying the recently appointed director of the Housing Institute is not ready
to discuss these issues.
Everyone knew the building on Aguila Street, where little Adelkyis was born
and raised, was on the verge of collapsing. Parts of the building had
already crumbled and several months ago it was officially condemned and
slated for demolition, officials said. However, residents say there were no
locks on the building, only a neighborhood watch system meant to keep people
out.
Because most residents did not have the means to store their belongings
elsewhere, they regularly returned to the building at night to make sure
their furniture, television sets or refrigerators - precious possessions
that are difficult to replace - were not stolen.
Barbara Linares, 35, grew up in a Central Havana building which collapsed in
1991.
The housing department placed her and her extended family in an abandoned
storefront where they've lived ever since. The walls are cracked and large
patches of plaster are missing from the ceiling, exposing the rebar
underneath. It has no running water and the stench of urine and mildew waft
from the broken-down bathroom.
Linares complains to the housing department several times a month and
recently showed them a large piece of plaster, which fell near her
10-month-old baby girl.
"They told me to come back Thursday, because my case was resolved. But when
I went back they had changed the local director," Linares said. "I just hope
to see my grandchildren grow up someplace else."
The government has offered her a new temporary apartment on the outskirts of
Havana in the community of Cotorro. Linares will not accept it because she
says it is too far away. Unreliable buses make this an unpopular option for
many who work and study in the city.
In Cotorro, work brigades are putting the finishing touches on a large
temporary housing development located at an old military compound. The first
tenants are families displaced from the collapsed building on Aguila Street.
The refurbished, Spartan barracks have private bathrooms and kitchens.
Tenants pay for utilities, but no rent. Still, many seem overwhelmed at the
prospect of finding new jobs and remaking their lives outside the city.
One housing official, who did not give her name, put it simply: "People have
to choose between safety and convenience. Which would you choose?"
In the Central Province of Sancti Spiritus, where 350 homes were torn to
bits by Michelle's category four winds, work brigades announced last week
that 29 new cement houses have been finished and turned over to families. In
most cases they are better than the ones that were destroyed. East of
Havana, in Matanzas province, dozens of homes have been razed and are being
rebuilt around the Central Australia sugar mill. Cinder blocks and logs are
being hauled to different lots as workmen pour cement, measure foundations
and erect walls. About 1,500 homes are slated to be built in the region for
victims of Hurricane Michelle, said Rolando Sescalada, a building engineer
supervising the reconstruction.
"We can build them as fast as we can get the materials here, but the problem
mainly is transportation, fuel costs, these matters. As you can see, we're
using anything we can to move the materials,'' Sescalada said, pointing to a
tractor pulling a flimsy trailer stacked with cinder blocks.
'waited and waited'
In nearby Torriente, at least 30 people, about a third of them children,
have lived for the past few weeks in the Henry River secondary school, a
large, three-story abandoned building with decaying cement stairwells and
exposed wiring. They sleep in a central breezeway on bunk beds. Three
barrels supply their drinking water and many are cooking food on small fires
between the beds. They have no electricity, they said.
"I'm not that concerned - Fidel said it would take a year to rebuild, so I
think we'll have homes soon,'' said Juan Martinez Rodriguez, a farm worker.
Others were not so sure.
"I wouldn't be here if I had any place else to go. Now I'm worried that I'm
stuck here," said Elsa Gomez. "They told us that someone from the government
was coming here on Monday. We all got out here and waited and waited, but
they never showed up."
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/cuba/sfl-cubahousing1216.story...
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