For a long time, the houses with dirt floors have been a reflection of the levels of vulnerability under which many families have lived in conditions of extreme poverty.
He dust and the insalubrity threaten the health of the residents of these buildings, which are usually built with inappropriate materials which also offer very low resistance to extreme natural and climatic phenomena.
This is one of the reasons why the Dominican government included the elimination of dirt floors among the 50 key actions that he outlined in his first Council of Ministerscarried out on January 11, along with other measures, such as eradicating the use of wood and charcoal stoves. But how many homes does the country have under this condition?
Of the 3,694,060 homes occupied in the Dominican Republic at the national level, 1.9% of them (69,620) had dirt floors –25,366 in urban areas and 44,254 in rural areas– according to the 2022 National Population and Housing Census, which collects the most recent official data in this regard.
Despite the accelerated level of urban planning in Saint Dominicthe current census recorded 11,409 homeswhich makes it the province with the most buildings with this characteristic, followed by Saint John (6,010) and Azua (4,277).
On the contrary, the districts where there are fewer and fewer homes with these apartments are Mirabal Sisters (304), Santiago Rodríguez (402) and Samaná (649).
The figures show that, in two decades, more than half of houses nationwide have eradicated dirt floors, if compared to the 150,123 occupied private homes registered in the 2002 census.
Initiatives
There are initiativesboth from the public sector as from the private sectorwhich aspire to eradicate dirt floors in the country.
Since 2020, the Government has been carrying out, through the Ministry of Housing and Buildings the program “Change of floor of dirt for a cement floor” with the aim of improving the lives of families living in the extreme povertya program that has been able to achieve the change of 13,905 homes nationwide from 2021 to 2024.
The foundation Habitat for Humanity announced that he contributed to 530 homes They will change their dirt floors for polished cement floors in the second half of last year, with the goal of eradicating up to 1,888 floors of dirt this year.
