Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Full stride
Although it got off to a slow start in building new housing the government appears to now have hit its stride. In fact, it is now building more housing than previous governments did:
This year it plans to complete over 80,000 new housing units. And after travelling around Venezuela a little all I can say is; it shows.
You don't even have to go looking for the new government built housing - you will invariably just run into it. For example, here is some you go by on your way through Valencia:
Of course, in Barquisimeto I am guarenteed to see it as the people I stay with live in it and allowed me to see first hand how high quality it is. Yet in going back now I see that they have built lots more of it. Remember this:
Well, now it looks like this:
Yet even just driving around Barquisimeto you run into lots of new government built housing. Driving on Barquisimeto's brand new belt highway (really nice, but that is a post for another day) you see this:
Of course, once I got to my destination, Cabadure, I saw yet more housing, which I showed in Sunday's post.
And on the way home on the road to Duaca I ran into this new development going up:
These houses are nothing fancy - definitely not luxury living. Yet they are more than adequate - what Venezuelans refer to as "casas dignas" (dignified houses). Sneaking inside I saw these even have the very nice wood ceilings that we have seen in other government housing:
They are also being hooked up to water and sewer systems, which if you think back to Charles Hardy's account of what government housing built under Carlos Andres Perez was like, is no small thing. You can see the piping being put in before the houses are built:
Of course, what I am showing here isn't even close to all the new housing I've seen while riding busses around the country. But digital cameras being what they are it isn't always possible to get pictures as you speed by.
Anyways, my apologies for hogging up everyones bandwidth. But please humor me with this as I am having fun showing you all the things the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Economist, etc. like to ignore.
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This year it plans to complete over 80,000 new housing units. And after travelling around Venezuela a little all I can say is; it shows.
You don't even have to go looking for the new government built housing - you will invariably just run into it. For example, here is some you go by on your way through Valencia:
Of course, in Barquisimeto I am guarenteed to see it as the people I stay with live in it and allowed me to see first hand how high quality it is. Yet in going back now I see that they have built lots more of it. Remember this:
Well, now it looks like this:
Yet even just driving around Barquisimeto you run into lots of new government built housing. Driving on Barquisimeto's brand new belt highway (really nice, but that is a post for another day) you see this:
Of course, once I got to my destination, Cabadure, I saw yet more housing, which I showed in Sunday's post.
And on the way home on the road to Duaca I ran into this new development going up:
These houses are nothing fancy - definitely not luxury living. Yet they are more than adequate - what Venezuelans refer to as "casas dignas" (dignified houses). Sneaking inside I saw these even have the very nice wood ceilings that we have seen in other government housing:
They are also being hooked up to water and sewer systems, which if you think back to Charles Hardy's account of what government housing built under Carlos Andres Perez was like, is no small thing. You can see the piping being put in before the houses are built:
Of course, what I am showing here isn't even close to all the new housing I've seen while riding busses around the country. But digital cameras being what they are it isn't always possible to get pictures as you speed by.
Anyways, my apologies for hogging up everyones bandwidth. But please humor me with this as I am having fun showing you all the things the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Economist, etc. like to ignore.
|
