CUBA: Women Combating Shortage of Decent Housing


Barrio de Pogolotti - Credit:Baldrich

HAVANA, Jul 2 (IPS) - Juana Hilda Naranjo no longer worries when it rains. For the last three years she has been living in a modern apartment out of reach of the water and wind, thanks to the efforts of the Taller de Transformación (Transformation Workshop) in the poor, predominantly black Havana neighbourhood of Pogolotti.

"I used to have to put out pots and pans when it rained, because of the leaks, and the house would flood," Naranjo, 69, told IPS. In 1980 she had moved from the interior to an area called Isla del Polvo, a marginal section of the Havana district of Marianao, where the families of migrants from other provinces have lived for nearly a century.

Official figures reflect a housing shortage of 500,000 units in this Caribbean island nation of 11.2 million. But 15 percent of urban dwellings and 38 percent of rural housing units are in poor condition, according to the last national census, carried out in 2002.

In 1993, after the so-called "storm of the century", which damaged or destroyed around 30,000 homes and caused an estimated one billion dollars in economic losses, the Taller de Transformación in Pogolotti drew up a project for building 25 houses for the residents of Isla del Polvo.

But the project was initially looked at with scepticism by the potential beneficiaries.

"Many local residents did not want to take part, because they thought the project was not really going to bring results," said Noemí Reyes, the social worker who heads the Taller. So a construction brigade was created, made up mainly of women, who were trained at the Instituto Superior Politécnico José Antonio Echeverría, a vocational-technical institute in the capital.

An agreement was later reached with local institutions that had experience in construction, to provide support for the community in the building process.

The initial plan was expanded to 62 housing units, which are one of the main achievements of the Taller, one of 20 set up by the Grupo de Desarrollo Integral de la Capital (Group for the Integral Development of the Capital - GDIC).
[...]

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38395