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The independent journalist Boris González Arenas reported this Thursday on Facebook that in an old market on Manglar Street, in the municipality of El Cerro, Havana, several containers with holes have been piled up that seem to be adaptations to turn them into something like homes.
The photograph published by González Arenas shows at least one container from the Danish shipping company Maersk, in a rusted condition, placed on a deteriorated urban street in the municipality.
This situation is part of the severe housing crisis facing Cuba, where the official housing deficit exceeds 929,000 units, and the government has turned to alternative solutions due to the lack of construction materials and resources.
Among those solutions, the regime announced at the time the conversion of more than 3,500 shipping containers into modular homes, an initiative that has generated both expectations and criticism among the population.
In this context, the Cuban authorities inaugurated a complex of 18 container homes as an ecological initiative, and also delivered 15 container homes for hurricane victims, presenting these projects as progress in housing policy.
However, the results have been modest. In an earlier phase of the program, only 133 units distributed across eight municipalities were reported, a number far from the actual needs of the country.
The overall outlook for the construction sector is not encouraging either: the Cuban government officially acknowledged the failure of its housing program in a context where the country only completed 22% of its annual construction plan.
González Arenas is a journalist who has faced reprisals for his work. The regime prevented him from traveling to the United States to participate in events related to press freedom, and the mission chief Mike Hammer met with him in a show of support for his journalistic work.
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