VENEZUELA:
Many Housing Plans, but Limited Resources
Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, (IPS) - "Where's the end of the line? Another queue; whatever it takes to get a house," said Ángela Rodríguez as she reached Panteón Plaza in the Venezuelan capital, where thousands of housing rights activists who support President Hugo Chávez gathered after a recent march through the central part of the capital.

Seven or eight out of every 10 of the participants in Sunday's march were women. Amidst the heat and the chaos in the plaza -- there were no loudspeakers, so the demonstrators were unable to hear the activists' speeches -- Rodríguez, 38, joined a group of women from Las Adjuntas, a low-income barrio on the southwest side of Caracas.

Rodríguez said she hoped to obtain support from the government, because on her hairdresser's salary, she cannot possibly afford to buy a house.

"We don't need waiting lists, lines and petition drives," said Máximo Hernández, coordinator of the Sin Techo (Homeless) Committee National Foundation, which organised the march.

"This is a demonstration by the people, who have come together to draw attention to this problem," he told IPS as the demonstrators crowded around him to get advice about loans, paperwork, deadlines and timeframes, construction materials or land.

Many of the participants were wearing red berets, or t-shirts with the president's image, while chanting pro-Chávez slogans.

But one elderly man complained: "What chaos, they don't even have loudspeakers. The revolution is not going anywhere this way."

He was referring to the president's self-styled "social revolution", which has included a wide range of initiatives targeting the poor, like an adult literacy campaign, a programme under which thousands of Cuban doctors have brought primary health care to the slums, micro-credit schemes, a chain of shops in low-income neighbourhoods providing food at subsidised prices, and soup kitchens.

Through government housing programmes, meanwhile, local residents are granted lots or buildings that were expropriated by the state, receive support in organising cooperatives to build or refurbish their own homes, or receive assistance to upgrade their own precarious dwellings into decent, safe housing units.

In addition, "urban land committees" have been organised to help people determine what plots of land are suitable for building houses within their communities, in order for the government to provide financial and technical support in their efforts to build or refurbish homes themselves.

The Sin Techo movement, which emerged two years ago, is a grassroots organisation that helps slum-dwellers or people who have been left homeless by the winter storms and flooding to navigate the red tape for obtaining available housing assistance from the government. Also involved in the movement are families of squatters, who have occupied buildings in Caracas and other cities.

"Nationwide we have gathered 323,412 requests for housing, and we got the Housing Ministry and provincial and city governments to accept us as a vehicle for facilitating the paperwork. We are even going to meet with representatives of the business community," says Hernández. "We are all volunteers; the group does not charge one cent for the assistance it provides."

Venezuela has long had a chronic housing crisis. There is a total deficit of between 560,000 and 1.6 million new housing units, according to different official and private sector estimates, including those of the Venezuelan Construction Chamber.

This oil-rich South American nation has a population of 26.8 million and 6.2 million households, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INE).

The INE reported that 942,000 households -- 15.7 percent of the total -- suffered from severe overcrowding as of late 2004.

Leaders of Venezuela's severely weakened opposition movement, like Teodoro Petkoff -- who plans to run against Chávez in the December elections, which the president is expected to win -- have complained that in the seven years since Chávez took office, only 120,000 housing units have been built.

Marino Alvarado, an activist with the non-governmental Venezuelan Programme of Action and Education in Human Rights (PROVEA), told IPS that "this government, like previous ones, has a public housing vision that puts a priority on building new dwellings, which translates into inaction, due to the resources required and the red tape involved."

PROVEA, which is carrying out a project on the right to housing, estimates the countrywide deficit of new housing at just 600,000 units, while it says one million are in need of repairs, refurbishing or upgrades.

With respect to the condition of existing homes, PROVEA estimates that in 2004, only nine percent of the country's housing units could be classified as slum dwellings, while 92 percent of all homes had access to piped water, and a mere four percent lacked sewage facilities or septic tanks.

The United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) include halving the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and improved sanitation by 2015, and achieving a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020.

Venezuela has implemented a number of projects towards these ends.

When a deteriorated bridge linking Caracas with the port and airport was shut down due to signs of imminent collapse caused by torrential rains early this year, the government offered hundreds of families in a poor neighbourhood, Nueva Esparta, 23,000 dollars each in compensation for eviction.

The beneficiaries were given a certificate exchangeable for that sum, to go towards the purchase of a used (not a new) housing unit.

The measure was named "Plan Ocho", as it was the eighth Housing Ministry plan aimed at addressing the needs of communities living in hazardous areas. In the last five months, the ministry has assigned 10,113 dwellings nationwide to families left homeless by flooding or other causes, or evicted from dangerous areas, at a cost of 174 million dollars, said Housing Minister Luis Figueroa.

But due to funding constraints, "we have only been able to provide emergency solutions to those living in the riskiest areas. The rest must get on waiting lists, while we verify their situation," said Figueroa.

Outside the National Housing Council, one of the government offices that attends residents of Caracas with housing problems, dozens of people wait all night in line to have a chance to present their requests, add their names to waiting lists, or find out how their cases are progressing.

There are frequent complaints of mishandling of case files, the loss of application forms, or the charging of "commissions" by unscrupulous functionaries, to "speed up" the paperwork.

Figueroa hopes that 2006 will be the first year that the government will reach the goal of building 100,000 new dwellings, including 60,000 to be built by companies from China and Iran on some 30 publicly-owned lots, at a total investment cost of 260 million dollars.

A total of 12,000 prefabricated homes will also be imported from Uruguay, including 2,000 that will come ready to assemble, to be put to immediate use for people left homeless by natural disasters.

In the medium to long term, the government plans to build "new towns" based on cooperatives, in the countryside as well as urban areas.

"I'm interested in that for the future, but for now I prefer to get assistance to buy a used dwelling," said Aracelis Rojas, one of the dozens of women gathered in Panteón Plaza to seek housing solutions.

"I need a decent house for my three kids and myself, and I figured I shouldn't wait till the roof caves in," Ángela Rodríguez commented to IPS.

"But I'm not asking to just be given 50 million bolivars (the local currency)," which is the amount paid by the government in indemnification. "I want a loan that I can pay off with my work. I haven't given up yet on standing in lines, and even though it's exhausting, I'll stand in another one, if that means I'll get a house."