After more than fifty years of living under a property-less regime where the state owned all homes and building, Cuba has recently deregulated their real estate market giving Cubans the option to sell their homes for the first time. Ted Henken, a professor at Baruch College in New York, hails this as a wise economic move: “With a housing market, suddenly people have some wealth and that’s a stale in the economy that generates activity.”
In a recent NPR interview, Havana architect and urban planner Miguel Coyula agreed. “Havana is a city that [appears] to be a city frozen in time. And now you suddenly open the market. You can buy, you can sell. And the question will be, in my opinion, the impact of this in the society, in the market. We are opening a new opportunity, a new field, for which we are not completely prepared, many people are not prepared.”
Indeed, in the past, many construction materials were only available on the black market. Now, however, those same materials are available to homeowners, promising that there will soon be a revitalization in Cuba unlike anything seen in recent years. “The government is finally giving the people a chance,” said Jorge Gonzalez, a (one) black-market cement vendor. “In the past, if they caught you with black-market construction materials, they would confiscate them. But now the state is making them available, and everyone is motivated.”
With the opportunity to put up houses and land for sale comes a sense of pride previously unknown to Cubans, most of whom have never known anything other than the way that things have been. While many buildings are far too dilapidated to be saved, many are not. Antonio Tresol and his son are in the process of fixing up their home, replacing patches of scrap metal with cement blocks and painting over rusty iron grill-work. When asked about his labor of love, he said, “I just have to finish that little part there and I’ll be done. We’re making it look beautiful again.”
There are certain restrictions which will continue to apply, such as construction supplies needing to be bought at government-run stores, families still being limited to one home in the city and one vacation home, and permanent residency being mandatory. Additionally, there is no mortgage financing available, so buyers will have to go through government banks and prove that their money was gotten through legal means.
Many fear that this will lead to homelessness. On an island where housing is already strained—many families, including divorced couples, often have to continue to live together for lack of a more suitable arrangement—there may be circumstances under which one party would stay while the other was evicted. “What happens if I sell my home and then I cant find another one to buy? Where do I sleep?” asked Félix Méndez, a 47-year-old hospital technician in Havana.
Another worry is that areas such as Havana would attract wealthy homeowners, thus exacerbating class conflict. This is added to by Cuban-Americans who are already sending money to their families following President Obama’s 2009 decision to allow unlimited travel and remittances for Cuban-Americans. While there is ostensibly a law barring non-residents from owning a home.
“I don’t know if they will control the market,” said Philip Peters at the Lexington Institute in Washington. “But it is certainly going to be the case that the market is going to settle in a way that’s heavily influences by demand from outside Cuba coming from relatives.”
Gerardo, a property broker in Havana, agrees: “Nobody who has been working, honestly, in a job in Cuba in the past 50 years could possibly afford to buy a second home. That money has to come from relatives overseas.”
Whatever the possible drawbacks to this important decision, one thing is for sure: the autocratic days of Fidel Castro are slowly, but surely, coming to an end. While this may mean a little confusion and chaos to Cubans who have grown used to the old way things were done, in the long run, it will mean prosperity and a chance for this island to experience a renaissance that has been long in coming.
Image by flippinyank
