Caracas, Venezuela – In the vast slums that cover the hillsides of Caracas, there are scattered signs of hope: workers in red T-shirts welding steel beams and smoothing out the concrete of new apartment buildings financed by President Hugo Chavez’s government.
The condominium-style homes contrast with the standard dwellings of one of the world’s most precarious urban sprawls: bare brick-and-cement “ranchos” that cling to steep slopes and regularly come crashing down in landslides.
“People have more hope now that the first homes are being given out,” says Noraida Bracho, who will soon leave behind the wooden shack she shares with her husband and 10 children for the housing deal of a lifetime: a new apartment with a two-year grace period followed by mortgage payments of $16.25 a month.
The housing initiative is a key part of Chavez’s campaign to direct more of Venezuela’s oil wealth to its neediest people. Yet for every family that gets a new home, countless others are waiting, and progress has lagged behind Chavez’s ambitious promises.
Earlier this year, he said he planned to provide 150,000 homes in 2006 – more than in any other year of his presidency. He later revised the goal down to 120,000, and now says roughly 80,000 homes have been given out so far this year – either built or bought with state funds.
It’s a relatively modest step in addressing a severe housing shortage. Venezuela still has an estimated shortfall of 1.6 million homes, meaning nearly one out of three people lack decent housing.
Opponents are seizing on the issue as Chavez seek re-election in a Dec. 3 vote. His main challenger, Manuel Rosales, says that bureaucracy and mismanagement have doomed the effort and that if elected he would work more with private-sector builders.
Housing the poor is a challenge throughout the developing world, and many Latin American nations choose market-driven solutions, offering generous home loans while relying on private developers.
In Mexico, the government is working with the private sector to build a projected 750,000 homes this year.
Chavez has opted for a government-centric approach.
He argues the slums are “the inheritance capitalism left to us,” and says a long-ignored problem is gradually being solved.
The American writer Mike Davis, in his book “Planet of Slums,” ranks Caracas’ barrios among the world’s largest “megaslums,” along with those of Mexico City, the capitals of Colombia and Peru and Nigeria’s biggest city, Lagos.
Caracas’ barrios – built with inexpensive bricks, corrugated zinc, wood and metal scraps – have been expanding for decades. Many are perched on unstable hillsides vulnerable to landslides, which sometimes leave hundreds homeless at a time.
Construction has lagged behind demand in the city of 5 million, causing rents to soar and worsening the dilemma.
The pro-Chavez mayor, Juan Barreto, has tried radical solutions, expropriating vacant buildings and even trying to buy up golf courses under eminent domain.
While many home-seekers wait on government lists, some are so desperate they break into apartments and squat. Others stage protests, blocking roads to demand help.
Outside one housing office, scores of people sit in a parking lot in plastic chairs waiting for their requests to be heard by officials.
“I’ve been coming here for six years, and they don’t resolve anything for me,” Victoria Yanez says angrily, holding a worn folder of documents.
She says a landslide swept away her home during 1999 flooding that killed thousands. She and her family lived for a time in a homeless shelter, and now in a gymnasium.
Chavez’s opponents say Venezuela, awash in oil money, should achieve more. Rosales notes government statistics showing more than 341,000 homes were built when oil prices were low during five-year government before Chavez. In Chavez’s nearly eight years in office, some 244,000 homes have been provided, according to figures given by Chavez and his housing ministry.
Chavez says his efforts were set back by a coup and an anti-government strike four years ago that devastated the economy.
This year, the housing minister says the government is spending some $3.7 billion on housing, but even Chavez has shown impatience at times. He’s had three housing ministers in two years.
In one new row of apartments, Vanessa Arrivillaga says she and her neighbors will vote for Chavez because “no one ever helped us before.” Many home recipients are chosen by neighborhood assemblies.
Others, such as Marisela Becerra, have asked for aid but received none.
“My rancho is falling down,” says Becerra, a single mother, pointing to cracks in her concrete floor where the earth is giving way below her shack of wood and rusted scrap metal.
Within sight of her front door, five new apartments are being built, but surrounding them are dozens of shacks like hers. And the shantytown hasn’t had running water in months.
“Maybe Chavez wants to help us,” she says. “But this barrio is quite neglected.”
