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Housing Wait Is Long For Displaced Cubans

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The Associated Press

Published: September 24, 2008

HAVANA DEL ESTE, Cuba - When Hurricane Charlie tore through her apartment, Marcia Escalona considered herself lucky to land temporary housing on the Cuban capital's remote outskirts while communist authorities pledged to help her rebuild.

Four years later, it no longer feels temporary.

"They told me it would be six months, but that was in 2004, and I want out of here already," said the 48-year-old kindergarten supervisor who lives with her husband and 22-year-old son in two rooms with concrete walls and a leaky roof in Bahia, a community of temporary housing in Havana del Este, or East Havana.

Now hundreds of thousands of Cubans blown from their homes by Hurricanes Gustav and Ike have joined Escalona in line for scarce housing.

Damage to infrastructure, crops and farm equipment means the government may have to use its resources for food before building materials.

Gustav and Ike roared across the island eight days apart in late August and early September, killing seven Cubans and damaging nearly half a million homes, even while some Cubans forced into temporary, "in-transit" shelter by previous storms have waited years - even decades - for new places to live.
Hurricane victims in other poor countries, such as Haiti, cannot dream of even temporary government-provided shelter.

In the United States, three years after Hurricane Katrina, thousands of low-income families continue to live in temporary housing because the storm wiped out affordable rental units.

Cuban Housing Institute officials are absorbed in rebuilding and won't be available for some time to talk about the "in-transit" program, a government spokeswoman said. No official figures were available on how many Cubans were already living in temporary housing before Gustav and Ike struck.

The storms exacerbated a severe housing crisis in the country of 11 million, where apartments are so hard to find that couples often continue to share homes even after divorces.

In 2005, Cuban officials said they needed more than 500,000 additional homes and the problem has only gotten worse.

About 450,000 homes were damaged, more than 63,000 of them beyond repair. At least 200,000 Cubans were left newly homeless and the government says "hundreds of thousands more" may have to find temporary housing.

Cuba's communist government controls nearly all housing and citizens depend on the state for all new construction or major repairs.

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