ent free and fully housed - 0 S By WILLIAM DEVINE - HAVANA The buildings of East Havana con- tinue to dominate the eastern extrem- ity of the Cuban capital. Located on an ocean-front stretch of land just beyond Havana Harbor, they provide a replica 4n miniature of the soaring skyline of the city’s commercial centre further o| to the west. | n- ‘Ss 4 t But decorative as they are, this is a secondary, albeit welcome, attribute of their main function. For that main function is housing—housing for many thousands of Havana’s formerly home- less. As such, East Havana is one of the Cuban Revolution’s most apparent e and striking achievements. Completed in 1961, it’s also the first major housing project of its kind in the. island since the Revolution. And when ‘one thinks of housing in Cuba, one must, we think, inevitably return to East Havana for one of the most vivid . examples of what’s been done. But before you’d get back there, if you looked elsewhere, you’d have _found plenty more to catch your eye. In Havana itself, for example, East Havana is not the only housing pro- ject. Other new apartment and house- = building schemes dot the landscape. The latest highrise is a 17-story build- ing overlooking the ocean on the city’s ‘| proad and winding sea-shore boule- vard, the Malecon. All other Cuban ‘cities are also no exception. Qn a grip through the coun- try last year, we saw large-scale apart- ment units that had been constructed since the Revolution. Such was the case—that we were able to observe— ) ip Holguin, in Oriente province, and in Santa Clara, the capital of Las Villas | province. And such was most certainly the case in Santiago de Cuba, the capital of Oriente province, last July 26. That date is the anniversary of the 1953 at- “tack on the city’s Moncada Barracks | led by Fidel Castro. And the main cel- ebration of the date last year was held in the eastern city. Foreign guests for the occasion, as well as delegates to a series of inter- national events in Cuba at the time, were transported to Santiago de Cuba and placed in rather remarkable ac- -commodations. Whisked from the air- selves ensconced in a seemingly end- less series of five-story apartment buildings just constructed on the out- skirts of the city. ach building, whose outer walls were decorated with vari-colored - panels, consisted of spacious one, two and three-bedroom apartments, fully furnished. The bedrooms led off a compact combination living and din- ing room, which in turn was connec- ‘ted to a kitchenette that further ; port in special buses, they found them- FE eS ee ee he Lee Cee ee be eee Zs opened on to a small laundry area. The project had been rushed to com- pletion to house the guests for July 26. And if those guests felt a little awk- “ward at such largesse, the feeling was Jessened by the knowledge that as soon as they left, several thousand } Santiago families were going to move thie “right in. We weren’t there to see it, but it |) must have been quite a house-worm- ing. Not only did the new tenants re- ceive spanking: new apartments; they got a whole lot of bonuses besides. The project is replete with a central dining hall for meals out if desired, barber shops and beauty salons, shop- ping areas and just about everything the modern apartment dweller could desire. But beyond. this, there was one other vitally important feature. The long rows of.apartments had been built right next to a ramshackle slum area. (This has also been done with apartment projects we saw elsewhere.) And the new occupants of Santiago’s new apartments would be the former slum-dwellers. In the old, pre-Revolu- tion days, that slum would have been their home for life, with none of them even daring to dream of anything else. Not so today. Yet there is still an- other remarkable aspect to housing in Cuba, whose distribution, incidentally, is shared in the cities by Urban Re- form authorities and the trade unions on the basis of need. That aspect is rents—or, to be more exact, the wide- spread lack of them. ‘ For hundreds of thousands . of Cubans pay no rent. Under the Urban Reform Law of 1960, tenants were given title to the homes they occupy, and rents cease to be paid when the capitalization of the building in ques- tion is covered. Thus, each year, many thousands of Cubans simply drop the rent habit. Those still paying rent pay no more than 10 percent of their income. And the perspective is that by 1970, no Cuban will pay any rent at all. If that perspective seems a bit daz- zling, bear in mind that it’s one that has already been reached in the coun- tryside. There, already, no rural family pays rent. All of which leads to this observa- tion: if Cuba’s cities provide substan- tial evidence of housing achievements, Cuba’s countryside provides even more. The trip we took through Cuba last year was by car. And as we drove from west to east and back again, we could see still standing many of the old ‘“bohios,” or thatched-roof huts, for which Cuba’s rural areas were so infamous during the days before the Revolution. But.we could also see dozens of new ‘housing developments, made up of scores of neat, one and two-story cement houses. And as these houses were going up, the bohios were com- ing down. Our Cuban companion on our trip — told us that at that time, more than 200 such groups of houses had been built throughout rural Cuba since the former dictator Batista was over- thrown. More have sprouted since. One of the latest was a 120-home project, built in only 44 days, and located in the Havana Green Belt, an agricultural plan surrounding Havana designed to make the capital self- sufficient in farm and meat products. Fidel. emphasized something he has stressed on several previous occasions: that when it comes to housing in Cuba, the countryside gets top priority. AGB L ane Me