On the island, the construction or restoration of a house has ceased to be a purpose to become a chimera.
Holguin, Cuba. – “In Cuba you can’t build a quarter. With the salaries that Cubans have, it barely gives us to malcomer something; so you have to forget to build.” The holguinero Roberto Pérez, resident in the Vista Alegre cast, portrays the national reality: the hope of having decent housing does not exist in the midst of a systemic crisis that keeps Cubans between subsistence wages, bureaucracy and an inaccessible material market.
The construction or restoration of a home has ceased to be a purpose to become a chimera, in a country where daily effort is concentrated only in ensuring next meal.
While the official average salary oscillates between 6,506 and 6,649 monthly Cuban pesosindependent observatories such as the Food Monitor Program (FMP) They calculate That a healthy minimum diet for only two adults in Cuba requires around 41,735 CUP per month.
This figure is equivalent to almost 20 minimum wages or more than six average salaries; So the salary of a state worker barely covers a fraction of his basic food needs.
The Holguinera Caridad Romero German agrees that any material need subordinates to the need to eat. “The salary is to buy the rice, beans and, if perhaps, a little piece of something else. After one manages to put a plate of food on the table, in the wallet what remains is a hole. Build? What’s going. What is a luxury of millionaires. We live up to date, solving today and with an uncertain tomorrow,” he says.
Lázaro Díaz Pérez, a teacher whose house is in bad conditions, compares his monthly salary – 4,800 pesos – with the price of a cement bag of 40 kilograms – almost 7,000 pesos. “To buy only one cement sack I have to work almost two months and not eat. The account does not give,” he says, without taking into account the price of the rest of the materials.
In the midst of this panorama, the governmental policy of subsidies for construction and rehabilitation of houses is an convoluted bureaucratic maze that achieves almost nothing.
January 16, 2012 He entered into force The regulations for delivering subsidies, destined to the construction and rehabilitation of housing, to people without economic solvency, with priority for families affected by catastrophes and critical social cases.
The provision, contained in the Agreement 9072/2021explains that the objective of this government program is to finance construction materials, labor, transportation (from the points of sale to homes), technical documentation and perpetual right of land surface.
It also establishes that the budget for a basic housing cell (25 square meters) is up to 188,560 Cuban pesos.
However, of the 3,069 subsidies planned for 2025 in Cuba, with the aim of building basic housing cells, only 3%was culminated. The figure represents the worst indicator of the housing program since its inception, according to It was reported In the last session of the V ordinary session of the X Legislature of the National Assembly of Popular Power, last July.
The experience of Yanelis Rodríguez, of the distribution Alcides Pino, demonstrates it. “They gave me a subsidy to fix my house in 2019 and I am still in them. It is as if they had forgotten all those in this situation,” he says.
The money, although assigned to Rodríguez, remains untouchable, blocked by a tangle of requirements. “I have had to pay the mason of my pocket, because from the bank I have not been able to get a kilo. They demand that the mason be a patent. Now I have all that money clogged in the bank and I have to look for me to another mason that does have the patent. It is a requirement after another; and no mason wants to get a patent and do those jobs, because the tax is much.”
This case is no exception. In Holguín, of the more than 10,500 subsidies granted since 2012, a considerable part of the money is still not there. Official data They indicate a “chronic problem of slowness and low percentage of execution, with only 13% compliance at some stages evaluated.”
Although authorities such as María Teresa Cruz Pérez, Provincial Director of Housing in Holguín, and Yoanky Ultra González, Housing Director in Havana They support objective problems As the deficit of materials, the words of the Minister of Construction, René Mesa Villafranca, They point to the need to “control the resources that are put in the hands of the population and identify the true vulnerable.”
Even those who manage to overcome these bureaucratic difficulties are found with a construction materials affected by hyperinflation and scarcity.
Carlos Vega, neighbor of the new holguin cast, details the prices: “The gravel meter is for 6,500, the stone dust to 150 pesos a can, the brick is 25 pesos the unit and the square meter of Repello at 500 pesos. The blackouts do not let the mills work with stability and that has caused the scarcity of sand and that its price has risen to 6,500 pesos”.
Shortage and high prices are not isolated phenomena, but the direct result of the national productive collapse. The State Housing Plan It is only 22% Due to multifactorial effects: the lack of inputs such as cement and steel, the energy crisis that paralyzes industries and obsolete technology.
Reynolds Ramírez Vigaud, president of the Business Group of Construction Materials (Geicon), recognized that the lack of energy carriers caused 90% collapse in the cement industry in 2024.
The general director of Housing of the Ministry of Construction (Micons), Delilah Díaz Fernández, admits that “constructive levels have not been increased; planning is lower than in previous years and still violates. The fund does not evolve and needs exceed the approved plans.”
Holguin, with a deficit of 115,965 homes, It is one of the most affected provinces.
Mario Valdés González, 68, summarizes the panorama: “I have been working since I was a boy. And for what? To get old and be afraid that my own house will fall on me?”
