Chávez orders to vacate government building to house homeless families

[ChangoLoa]

Venezuela's Presidente Hugo Chávez on Wednesday ordered vacating Palacio Blanco, (a government building in front of the Miraflores presidential palace, downtown Caracas) to assist people who lost their houses amidst heavy rains in the Venezuelan capital. The number of people taken to disaster shelters exceeds 33,000.

"I call upon government top government officials to make room (in the building)… Palacio Blanco is a big construction and it can become a building complex as 23 de Enero, (a low-income neighborhood downtown Caracas)."


http://english.eluniversal.com/2010/12/01/en_pol_esp_chavez-orders-to-vac_01A4800417.shtml

[social_critic]

1. More nonsense

What they need to do is set up a scheme to put people in tents immediately, for a few days, and at the same time clean all the empty containers they have around and convert them to cargo housing - cargo housing kits are easy to make and the containers are definitely water tight. This allows for the housing to be distributed so they can continue to live close to where they lived, and go to work using the same methods they used before, and children can go back to the same schools, and so on.

According to the paper, there are 35,000 people out of their houses. If 20,000 need longer term refuge, then the answer is to locate 5000 cargo containers and have them changed to cargo housing, link them to portable toilets, etc. Long term they need to figure out a simple issue: they can't build enough quality housing if they threaten private industry all the time with nationalization, and if inflation is so high nobody knows what a brick is supposed to be worth. This is even more critical when the population growth rate is so high.

Cuba could get away with lousy housing development and poor maintenance under a communist command regime, but Cubans have had a very low birth rate and over one million Cubans left the country. Venezuela has a much higher birth rate, they have a huge Catholic church influence opposing the use of contraceptives, and they keep growing and growing. Therefore a well organized plan needs to be prepared to house all the incoming population as well as the population which loses its housing during storms and other calamities.

Some birth control would help, of course, but that's such a controversial subject, I'd rather not mention it again.

[EFerrari]

3. So, do you have any links showing that no measures

are being undertaken in Venezuela to deal with these displaced people? I'd love to see them, thanks.

[social_critic]

5. I sure don't

They are taking measures. This one particular measure, to evacuate a government building downtown, is for show. It's nonsense. The Venezuelan government already has serious problems dealing with everyday life, they don't need to be evacuated out of an OFFICE building to fill it with refugees.

I guess some people always miss the point.

[EFerrari]

2. How big is that building?

Compare and contrast to this city in Silicon Valley. It was freezing here over the Thanksgiving weekend. But the city was refusing to open the shelters for the homeless because they weren't scheduled to open until Monday.

All the puddles from the rain up here were frozen when I got up on Thursday but the bureaucrats wouldn't' let people inside because it was the wrong day.

[Billy Burnett]

4. Hold it. The "free" market didn't take care of of this?

At least under the Castro dick tater ship he personally would have opened the shelter - of course, only for good PR.

;)

-

Truly horrific story. It is illegal to feed the homeless in Miami-Dade without the required permit (which requires a course on food hygene provided (for a required fee) by a private corporation).

[Judi Lynn]

7. I've heard about that made-for-Miami law. Doesn't seem possible, does it?

You know a city has reached a point which should demand a complete shake-up from top to bottom when it can come up with something like that. They need to start all over again.

In so many big cities you hear common stories of restaurants, organizations taking food, coffee, water, blankets, shoes, socks, coats, clothing, to the homeless on a DAILY BASIS, because they are HUMAN BEINGS.

Your Castro comment does remind one of that eternal charge the rightists make against leftist politicians, claiming they offer to make things better for the poor so the poor will vote for them, implying there's really no one who gives a flying #### at all, and that leftists are the same as rightists, except they lie about it for votes.

Something for these ####sticks to keep in mind is that when leftists are involved, the plight of the poor gets better, when the left does get a chance to direct change, regardless of the evil acts perpetrated by the right attempting to thwart progress at all costs.

Remember the right's pretensions during _Bush and the fact he threw so much US taxpayer's tax money to christian churches, channeling our hard-earned money to churches to decide who would eat and who would not? That was one smelly nightmare in US American history. What towering hypocrisy, what dirty cynicism.

We sneer in their general direction.

[Billy Burnett]

9. You've just exposed the regime of the evil Dr Castro's brainwashing technique.

Put in place a system that does right by the vast majority of the people, and the vast majority of the people will support the system.

It's pure evil genius.

:evilgrin:

[naaman fletcher]

10. I dunno..

I hate W as much as anyone, but he threw a lot of money at charity. Yes I would have preferred that it not go to churches. Also, W was the best president ever when it came to helping africa.

So, for all the reasons to hate him, and there are many, it doesn't seem like charity is one of them. And yes of course it came with the "christian" hypocrisy of feeding people out of one hand while killing people with the other.

[social_critic]

6. Vote the bums out of office

Where I live the shelters work fine, they are always open to take the homeless. City Hall is run by democrats, the budget is balanced every year, the city is kept clean, and there are no potholes. So maybe what you need in Silicon Valley is democrats with more common sense.

[ChangoLoa]

8. Miraflores?

Big enough for the 25 families but not very big for a presidential "palace". The Venezuelan State has never been somptuous/ostentatious (fastuoso).

Btw, Chavez is declaring they'll stay for a year in Miraflores.

The news you're giving is incredibly shameful but it wouldn't be so surprising if it had happened elsewhere in the US.