Venezuela launches effort to solve housing crisis (Reuters)

[Minstrel Boy]

Venezuela launches effort to solve housing crisis

Mon May 16, 2005

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Thousands of would-be Venezuelan home buyers are lining up to receive loans and subsidies from a government that is telling them, "You don't need to win the lottery to have a house of your own."

Following initiatives to improve health and education for the poor, left-wing President Hugo Chavez has launched his Housing Mission to try to provide homes for more than a third of Venezuela's 26 million people who lack a decent place to live.

...

The president has announced plans to build half a million homes between this year and next and has promised that in 17 years the housing problem will be solved. "Just as we say 'Homeland or Death,' it's 'Homes or Death,"' he told his ministers recently.

...

"At last our dream of having our own home can come true. We're being given facilities we never had before," said Isaura de Rojas, 31, who lives with her husband and two children in a rented house in Caracas' poor Catia neighborhood.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=ourWorldNews&storyID=8501683

[dcfirefighter]

1. Splitting up land

into a bunch of small-hold homeowners is a step in the right direction, but will still lead to the next generation needing land to build homes.

As radical as Chavez is, I wish he'd socialize land rents. Just tax landonwers at some rate up to the assessed rental value for the bare, unbuilt land.