Cuba: 6 Decades of Communism Leave a Third of Island's Housing in Ruins

The ongoing collapse of Cuba caused by decades of disastrous communist policies has left a significant portion of the nation’s housing in a derelict state, posing a high risk to its impoverished inhabitants, who live in buildings that could collapse at any time.

Collapsing buildings are a recurring deadly problem for Cubans. The communist Castro regime, which controls housing and all other aspects of Cuban life, appears to have no interest in improving housing for its people nor in maintaining Cuba’s historic buildings, many of which are presently in a precarious state.

The lack of investment in repairing or constructing new buildings or homes has left a growing number of buildings either collapsing or threatening to, leaving their inhabitants in a constant state of fear.

While some of the collapses have left no dead or injured, many such incidents have claimed the lives of some of inhabitants or passersby. One of the most notable recent incidents took place in 2022 after a gas explosion in Havana’s Hotel Saratoga killed 45 Cuban citizens. The explosion caused severe damages to not just the hotel, but also to surrounding residential buildings.

According to statements issued last week by Delilah Díaz Fernández, the communist regime’s Director General of Housing, 65 percent of Cuba’s 4.07 million homes are deemed to be in “good technical condition.” The Castro regime official also admitted that out of Cuba’s 168 municipalities, 59 have not completed basic housing units, with ten of the municipalities located in Havana.

Experts expressed extreme doubt about the statistical data provided by Díaz Fernández, warning on the Miami-based outlet Martí Noticias last week that, in reality, the situation is much worse.

“On the issue of housing our studies say that around 30-percent is in good condition, everything else needs to be repaired or is in danger of collapse,” explained Yaxis Cires, advisor to the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights (OCDH), a non-government organization.

Entrepreneurship advisor Ángel Marcelo Rodríguez Pita pointed out to Martí Noticias that the Castro regime has no way to supply the needs of people who need to repair their houses and suffocates the “private sector” that does.

“The latest measures announced have limited wholesale commercialization to private companies, which now cannot import cement or sand. So how do they expect to transform the construction situation in the country?” Rodríguez Pita said.

Builder Guillermo del Sol asserted to the Miami-based outlet, “Many subsidies have been left adrift in Cuba, houses that were left half-built, that were sold part of the materials and the other part never appeared.”

“Those houses were left half done, others were never even started, having the subsidies approved for low-cost housing, because the State does not have the materials in the markets to supply these people,” del Sol said.

Instead of investing in repairing apartments in Cuba or funding the construction of new housing solutions, the Castro regime has instead opted to invest in hotels and other tourism facilities — all of which are reserved for foreign tourists and are inaccessible and unaffordable to the common Cuban citizen.

By November, there were reportedly 33,889 families – or 132,699 individuals, out of the city’s 2.1 million inhabitants — who still needed housing in Havana, according to information published by Granma, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba.

Reports published in August indicate that the Castro regime increased its investment in hotels and restaurants by 112 percent during the first semester of 2024. In contrast, according to data from Cuba’s National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI), only one percent of the budget was invested in education, public health, and social assistance.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here