Makeshift housing spreads in Havana

Makeshift housing spreads in Havana
Ernesto Roque Cintero, UPECI

HAVANA, Cuba - June (www.cubanet.org) - Cubans in need of shelter in the
city of Havana are erecting structures of any material at hand and in
any area big enough to lie down.

These squatters, typically immigrants from the impoverished eastern
provinces of the island, have proved to be quite resourceful. They build
out of cardboard, wood, metal, plastic, foam, or any other material they
can "recycle." As to a building lot, any space will do; a few square
feet in someone's roof, a corner in somebody's back yard.

Such housing, considered illegal by authorities, is periodically torn
down by government officials, only to sprout up elsewhere.

According to an official with the State Council, the supreme governing
body in Cuba, there are 113 of these squatters' villas in the city.

One in Casablanca, a small community across the bay from Havana proper,
the first such structures started rising 18 years ago, said Manuel
Rodiles, who pronounced himself one of the longest and oldest residents
of the improvised settlement.

Rodiles said once there were as many as 1,500 housing units in the area,
but today there are only about 500 left. The government started evicting
squatters and bulldozing the structures about 5 years ago.

Rodiles said he is legally a resident of La Maya, near Santiago de Cuba,
at the other end of the island, and that he makes a living selling stuff
in the streets, naturally, without a license.

Rodiles, who said he has conducted a census of the slum, showed some
papers that show 945 residents, of whom 244 are children under 10; 63
are handicapped, 8 are pregnant, 10 are under psychiatric care, 230 are
housewives, 90 are elderly and 400 are men of working age.

Rodiles said the population encompasses young and old, white and black,
Communists and dissidents, workers and unemployed, but to the
government, they are all illegal.

http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y06/jun06/14e2.htm