Adisbel Rodriguez, Yoan Baez and their three children, all residents of the eastern Cuban province of Holguin, are among the thousands of people from the Caribbean to New York City who lost their homes during Hurricane Sandy. However, thanks to the Cuban government’s relief efforts they, along with over 150 others, are now the owners of new, hurricane-resistant homes in a community developed from idle facilities.
The devastation in Santiago de Cuba, the country’s second-largest city, and outlying areas is massive. Every city block has received major damage. Cuba needs immense amounts of building. Raw materials to begin this process, which would be easily obtained from the United States, is prohibited by the cruel U.S. blockade. Yet, the well-organized Cuban response to the devastating storm began without delay, as the government and population worked together to build and repair thousands of housing units to guarantee the dignity of residents.
On the other hand, the situation of hurricane victims in the United States is marked by uncertainty and neglect. Over two months after the storm hit, Congress—mired in a debate over whether they will release $20 billion or $40 billion less than what the most affected states have requested—has still yet to approve a comprehensive relief package that would repair damaged homes and infrastructure.
The stark contrast between the approach to housing and natural disasters by these two countries is explained by one fundamental difference: Cuba is a socialist state that serves the interests of workers, while the United States is a capitalist country, where profit is prioritized over people’s needs. While politicians’ callous indifference towards the well-being of poor and working people is obvious, this attitude is rooted in the structure of the capitalist system itself.
If they lived in the United States, the empty buildings that were converted into homes for Adisbel, Yoan and their three kids would have been the property of a landlord, whose sole interest would be in exploiting his tenants for the maximum amount of rent possible. But because there was a socialist revolution in Cuba, these and all other infrastructure can be used to fulfill the needs of the people.
This basic conflict between human need and the pursuit of profit is not only at play during periods of natural disaster. Over 3 million people in the United States experience homelessness at some point every year, nearly half of them children. Housing has historically been a major focus of revolutionary movements throughout U.S. history. For example, point four of the Black Panther Party’s famous 10-point program read, “We want decent housing, fit for the shelter of human beings.”
There are over 18 million vacant homes in the United States, but by the criminally absurd mechanisms of capitalism 842,000 people are homeless on any given week—resulting in 22 empty housing units per homeless person. A society like Cuba’s would simply distribute these homes to everyone who needed one, but because housing is treated as a commodity under the capitalist system, it regularly condemns hundreds of thousands to uncertainty, suffering and indignity.
Housing in socialist societies
Socialist states are able to avoid this irrational inefficiency through democratic economic planning. Under capitalism, each individual capitalist acts independently of one another with the goal of maximizing profit and swallowing the competition. Socialism replaces this anarchy by developing a central economic plan that guides production, distribution, investment and so on in consultation with the masses of people through grassroots assemblies and organizations such as unions, women’s and students’ federations.
By eliminating the extreme redundancies of the capitalist system, and without the burden of supporting the opulent lifestyles of a parasitic ruling class, socialist planned economies are able to create such an abundance of goods and services that the basic necessities of life can be guaranteed as fundamental rights. Article 9 of the Cuban constitution states, “The state … works to achieve that no family be left without a comfortable place to live.”
There is no such thing as an eviction in Cuba. In 1960—one year after the revolution—the government instituted the Urban Reform Law, which aimed to transform tenants into owners and ended landlordism. Property taxes were also abolished.
Within a few decades, 85 percent of Cubans owned their own home. For the small portion of Cubans who are not homeowners, the Urban Reform Law stipulates that no more than 10 percent of a family’s income is paid to the government as rent, whereas in the United States nearly one in four families spends the majority of their income on housing, with the average consumer spending 26 percent.
Housing was similarly a constitutional right in the Soviet Union—the first country in history to have a democratically planned economy. Before the 1989 counterrevolution that restored capitalism, a home was a right and rent was capped at 5 percent of a person’s income.
Besieged on all sides by the imperialist powers of the world, and suffering the brunt of the Nazi invasion in World War II, the Soviet Union had the monumental task of rebuilding not only the civilian infrastructure but also developing heavy industry and its military defense. In the war, its losses were catastrophic: More than 20 million people died, much of its industrial capacity and thousands of villages, towns and cities completely destroyed by the Nazis. Despite this, it was able to recover and become the second biggest economy in the world.
While there were still problems with insufficient housing stock, this is completely distinct from the phenomenon of overproduction that exists in capitalist economies. Immediately after the overthrow of socialism, homelessness came roaring into existence. By 2002, there were an estimated 100,000 homeless people in Moscow and 4 million across Russia.
Capitalists constantly force workers to produce more and more commodities at an ever faster rate. At the same time, to make the greatest profit possible they aim to pay workers as little as possible. The result of this situation is a glut of commodities but not enough people to pay for them, leading to a major breakdown that often swallows the entire system in crisis. In the Soviet Union, housing problems stemmed from a lack of homes, whereas in the United States people are homeless because there are more homes than can be sold at a profit. A centrally planned economy avoids this absurdity.
Countries seeking to emerge from underdevelopment and assert their national independence have also looked to socialist methods to deal with the issue of housing. The Venezuelan government, which is pro-socialist but has not yet made a final break with capitalist property relations, launched a program called the Grand Housing Mission Venezuela in April 2011.
The goal is to produce 2 million homes in seven years and distribute them at minimal prices to Venezuelans in need of dignified housing. Responsible for more than one-fifth of growth in the Venezuelan economy, the program is off to a successful start, slightly exceeding the goal of constructing 200,000 homes in 2012. So far, 36 percent of housing units were built under the leadership of institutions of dual power such as the communal councils or socialist communes.
Hugo Chavez said in his speech launching the Grand Housing Mission that “the housing problem cannot be solved from within the capitalist system—here we are going to solve it with socialism and more socialism.”
