Cuba: Desalojaran a familias del reparto marginal La Molinera en Santiago de Cuba

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Cuba: Situacion de la vivienda en Sagua la Grande

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Sindrome del Neokaxtrizmo: Un solar de la Habana Vieja - 2014

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Cuba: Familia vive en una casa sobre fosa

HablemosPress

Despite Real Estate Reforms, Housing Market In Cuba Sputters

Fox News Latino

HAVANA (AP) –  The residents of 308 Oquendo Street were jolted awake in the middle of the night by violent shaking and a noise that they likened to a freight train, or an exploding bomb.

Part of their building's seventh floor had collapsed into the interior patio, heavily damaging apartments on the floors below. No one died, but the 120 families living in the building were left homeless.

Despite reforms in recent years to address the island's housing problem, such building collapses remain common in Cuba, where decades of neglect and a dearth of new home construction have left untold thousands of islanders living in crowded structures at risk of suddenly falling down.

When President Raul Castro legalized a real estate market for the first time in five decades, it was supposed to stimulate both new construction and maintenance of existing homes. But 2½ years later, there has been only a minimal impact on easing one of Cuba's biggest challenges: a chronic lack of suitable housing.

"We are very worried. The housing situation is critical in Cuba," said Anaidis Ramirez, among those displaced by the Feb. 28 building collapse in the densely populated Central Havana neighborhood.

Ramirez and dozens of other neighbors camped out for weeks on sidewalks and in a nearby parking garage to press authorities to find them decent homes. Some went to stay with relatives, while others found housing in cramped government shelters where families can be trapped for years until a permanent home opens up.

Cuba, a country of about 11 million people, lacks around 500,000 housing units to adequately meet the needs of the island's citizens, according to the most recent government numbers from 2010. The housing deficit widens each year as more buildings fall further into disrepair, punished year-round by the tropical sun, sea and wind.

Sergio Diaz-Briquets, a U.S.-based demographer who has written about the island's housing deficit, estimated the figure is now somewhere between 600,000 and 1 million.

And, he said, adding in the existing units that are structurally unsound or otherwise unfit for occupancy, the true deficit "could be even greater."

In tandem with legalizing the real estate market, authorities are trying to tackle the problem by handing over warehouses, former retail spaces and other underused buildings to be converted into housing. They also created construction subsidies for Cubans looking to repair or expand existing homes.

Angel Vilaragut, a senior official in the Ministry of Construction, told The Associated Press recently that the subsidies and other measures mark a policy change from the days when the state shouldered nearly all responsibility for its citizens' housing.

"It is about seeking solutions to the problem we have today with housing," Vilaragut said. "There has not been a halt to the construction of homes by the state. ... The intention is for the people to have access to materials" such as cement and concrete blocks to do their own building and improvements.

Around Havana, Cubans can be seen taking advantage of the materials now available as they add second stories to homes, enclose balconies to create extra rooms or throw on a fresh coat of paint.

While helpful to individual families, such efforts are piecemeal and have not adequately addressed the overall deficit, analysts say.

Government statistics say new construction has actually declined since Castro assumed the presidency from older brother Fidel in 2008, when 44,775 new homes were built.

In 2011, the year the real estate law took effect, 32,540 new units were built. The following year, it was 32,103. Official figures for 2013 have not yet been released, but officials said late last year that about 18,000 had gone up through the end of October, 80 percent of the target.

Cuban economist Pavel Vidal, a professor at Javeriana University in Colombia, said it may take time for the new law to have an impact, especially because the incipient private sector so far doesn't have the economic resources to finance large-scale new construction.

"Responsibility for the construction of new homes is being given to the private sector, micro-enterprises and now cooperatives," Vidal said. "The new private sector — the scale it has, the capital it has — apparently it does not compensate what the state was doing."

Meanwhile, people like Lazaro Marquez and his family have to make do.

He and his family live in Central Havana in a substandard apartment whose ceiling leaks wastewater every time the toilet upstairs is flushed. To leave the home, his daughter, who is paralyzed, must be carried in her wheelchair down precarious stairs on the verge of caving in.

Although officials agree the family urgently needs better housing, on a ground floor, it has been on a waiting list for six years.

Cubans like Marquez and Ramirez have no choice but to depend on the state, in part because it has not created a mortgage system that would let them borrow money to purchase a home.

"Everywhere in the world the housing demand is accompanied by a finance mechanism, mortgage credits, and until a market of mortgage credit develops, demand will not stimulate construction of new homes for citizens," Vidal said.

Marquez thinks he had a better chance of getting a new home under the old rules, which saw the state redistributing the homes of people who have left the country to those who need housing. The state no longer automatically takes the homes of emigrating Cubans, who are now free to sell their property and pocket the cash.

Average incomes of around $20 a month mean most islanders cannot afford to buy real estate unless they have hard currency through a job with a foreign company or remittances from relatives overseas.

But even in gritty Central Havana, a one-bedroom apartment can cost at least $7,000.

"I drive a bicycle taxi," said Marquez, who makes about $2 a day pedaling passengers through the neighborhood. "How am I going to buy a house or an apartment with what I earn?"

NYT : Raúl Castro, 82,and the military oligarchy

Cuba Advisory

HAVANA — In the splendid neighborhoods of this dilapidated city, old mansions are being upgraded with imported tile. Businessmen go out for sushi and drive home in plush Audis. Now, hoping to keep up, the government is erecting something special for its own: a housing development called Project Granma, featuring hundreds of comfortable apartments in a gated complex set to have its own movie theater and schools.

“Twenty years ago, what we earned was a good salary,” said Roberto Rodríguez, 51, a longtime Interior Ministry official among the first to move in. “But the world has changed.”

Cuba is in transition. The economic overhauls of the past few years have rattled the established order of class and status, enabling Cubans with small businesses or access to foreign capital to rise above many dutiful Communists. As these new paths to prestige expand, challenging the old system of rewards for obedience, President Raúl Castro is redoubling efforts to elevate the faithful and maintain their loyalty — now and after the Castros are gone.

Project Granma and similar “military cities” around the country are Caribbean-color edifices of reassurance, set aside for the most ardent defenders of Cuba’s 1959 revolution: families tied to the military and the Interior Ministry. With their balconies, air-conditioning and fresh paint, the new apartments are the government’s most public gifts to its middle ranks and a clear sign of Cuba’s new hybrid economy, in which the state must sometimes compete with private enterprise.

The housing is just one example of the military’s expansive role in Mr. Castro’s plan for Cuba, and it illustrates a central conflict in his attempts to open up the economy without dismantling the power structure he and his comrades have been building for more than five decades.

In the short term, analysts and former officers say, he is relying on the military to push through changes and maintain stability as he experiments with economic liberalization. Yet his abiding dedication as a lifelong soldier who was defense minister for 49 years threatens to further entrench an institution that has often undermined changes challenging its favored status.

“Raúl knows the military answer is not the answer, but he also knows that at this time he absolutely needs military loyalty,” said Hal Klepak, a Canadian scholar who closely tracks the Cuban military. “They are the only ones who will follow him if the reform succeeds, or if it fails.”

Apartments at a new housing development in Havana called Project Granma are for loyal Communists, families tied to the military and the interior ministry. Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Mr. Castro and his brother, Fidel, given their guerrilla history, have always turned to the military in times of need. In the 1960s and early ‘70s, as Cuba’s professional class fled, officers in fatigues ran government ministries and nationalized industries. Since the 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the armed forces have been slashed to around 55,000, from a peak of more than 200,000, but they have also been pushed further into the Cuban economy.

As president, Raúl Castro, 82, has accelerated the growth of what some scholars have described as a military oligarchy. The chairman of the Economic Policy Commission, Marino Murillo, is a former officer. Cuba’s largest state conglomerate, Cimex, which processes remittances from Cubans abroad, among other tasks, is run by Col. Héctor Oroza Busutin. Raúl Castro’s son-in-law, Gen. Luis Alberto Rodríguez, is the top executive at the military’s holding company, known as Gaesa, which is estimated to control 20 percent to 40 percent of the Cuban economy.

And its role is expanding. In 2011, a financial arm of the company bought out Telecom Italia’s 27 percent stake in Cuba’s telecommunications company for $706 million. Gaesa also has a network of hundreds of retail stores selling everything from food to appliances. It is a growing force in tourism, too, controlling fleets of luxury buses, a small airline and an expanding list of hotels. And one of its subsidiaries is overseeing the free-trade zone built alongside Cuba’s largest infrastructure project in decades — the new container port in Mariel.

The military’s interests bestow the privileges of business on a chosen few, especially senior military officials. “They live better than almost anyone in Cuba,” said Brian Latell, a former C.I.A. officer who worked in Cuba.

A resident of Project Granma in Havana tends to his garden outside his apartment. Todd Heisler/The New York Times

But in the lower and middle ranks, experts say, esteem and relative wealth have eroded. Career officers in Cuba are now more likely to have friends or relatives who live abroad, or who visit Miami and often return with iPhones or new clothes unavailable at the state’s musty stores.

Meanwhile, military members must report all remittances they receive, and they are not allowed any “unauthorized contact” with foreigners or Cubans living abroad — limiting access to the money that other Cubans use not just for purchases, but also to improve their homes and open small businesses.

“It’s producing an exodus of talented people from the state to the private sector,” said Fernando Dámaso, 75, a retired colonel who writes a blog often critical of the government. “Most people in the military have seen their quality of life fall compared to a bartender or someone who has a small business. They can see that they are at a disadvantage.”

The new housing, a basic necessity in extremely short supply across the island, looks to many Cubans like another attempt at favoritism. According to government figures, the military’s construction budget has more than doubled since 2010. When combined with the Interior Ministry (often described as a branch of the military), the armed forces are now Cuba’s second-largest construction entity.

Project Granma — named after the boat Fidel Castro took from Mexico to Cuba to start the revolution — is one of several new military housing developments around the country. Its equivalent in Santiago de Cuba, where the Castro revolution began, has come under fire from Cubans struggling inrickety homes damaged by Hurricane Sandy. But as an attempt to match the private sector, or life in other countries, it is perhaps no accident that the colors and architecture of the Granma, in the same neighborhood that Raúl Castro calls home, give it the feel of a Florida condo complex.

At its edge, there is a baseball field. Inside the gates, streetlamps resembling classic gaslights line the sidewalks, while cars, another perk, fill lots.

At a building with rounded archways, where a movie theater, market and health clinic are meant to go, one of the project’s engineers said several thousand people would eventually call Granma home. Sweating in green army fatigues, he praised the plan, noting its imported, prefabricated design that allowed walls to be assembled quickly, like puzzle pieces. He failed to mention what a security guard had pointed out: Most of the workers painting were prison inmates.

Several residents said they were thrilled to live in what Mario Coyula, Havana’s former director of urbanism and architecture, called “the first gated community in Cuba since the 1950s.” Some said they had been living in cramped quarters with generations of family.

Support for Raúl Castro’s economic changes seemed strong here among those willing to talk. “It’s necessary,” Mr. Rodríguez, the official among the first to arrive at Granma, said as he sat outside with a cigarette. “If you’re cold, you put on a coat; it’s just what makes sense.”

But in the push and pull that has defined Cuba’s economic policies over the last two years, the government has often struggled with when to let the market function and when to protect the Communist establishment. The authorities, for example, recently cracked down on private vendors selling clothes and other items, widely seen as an effort to help the state’s own retail network.

Mr. Dámaso, who spent 32 years in the military, said that the country’s leaders, while longing for economic improvement, mainly want to preserve the Cuba they know.

“If you have a business run by military officers, when there’s a transition, you’re not going to get rid of all these people,” he said. “This is a way to maintain a space for established powers in a future Cuban society.”

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Derrumbes en La Habana: Ruina calculada

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Derrumbe en La Habana deja más de 600 personas en la calle

Cubanet

Augusto César San Martín y Pablo Méndez

LA HABANA, Cuba.- Desde la tarde del pasado jueves 27 permanecen en la calle los residentes del edificio ubicado en Oquendo 308, entre San Rafael y San Miguel, Centro Habana.

El derrumbe parcial en los pisos superiores puso en peligro la estructura del edificio de cinco plantas, con 120 apartamentos.

Desde los primeros desplomes del  hormigón armado, los más de 600 residentes comenzaron a abandonar el inmueble, trasladando sus pertenencias hacia la calle. Ante la inminencia de derrumbe total, las autoridades locales decretaron el desalojo.

Puertas, lozas de baño, inodoros, equipos electrodomésticos, camas y toda clase de pertenencias  mantienen los vecinos en la calle. Estas personas no han sido evacuadas.

A las 7: 00 pm del sábado la policía ordenó cortar la electricidad  y prohibió la entrada al edificio, hasta la mañana del domingo. La orden ocasionó alteración por parte de los vecinos, que no han terminado de evacuar sus pertenencias.

Durante el viernes, funcionarios del gobierno local se reunieron con parte de los afectados. Según una de las víctimas, aseguraron que se evacuarían a todas las personas paulatinamente.

Uno de los residentes del edificio que no quiso identificarse declaró a la prensa independiente:

-No sabemos para dónde vamos. Ayer pararon 9 guaguas aquí para llevarnos para albergues y se fueron vacías… Queremos casas, nada de albergue.

Se conoció además que algunas familias afectadas fueron instaladas en apartamentos de edificios ubicados en Santa Fe, municipio Playa. Las prioridades en las entregas de viviendas se establecen por la composición de núcleos familiares con niños.

El edificio construido en 1928 fue declarado de peligro de derrumbe en 1988. Todos las victimas consultadas coinciden en la reiteración de las alertas al gobierno sobre el deterioro de  la edificación.

Tiny Houses: A Big Idea to End Homelessness

NBC News.com

Advocates tackling the nation's homeless problem are thinking small.

In Austin, Texas, a village of 200 tiny houses is being built for the homeless. In upstate New York, Rochester Greenovation has designed a prototype for small-scale individualized shelters. “Homeless No More Survival Pods” have been built in Utah, micro-pods in Florida, miniature homes in Wisconsin and mini mobile houses in California.

The “Tiny House Movement,” once an architectural component to a downsized life, is now becoming something much bigger: an escape from chronic homelessness.

“This is a plan that could revolutionize the housing movement in the United States,” declares Alan Graham, 58, a Texas activist who says his self-founded organization, Community First, has already lifted 100 homeless people off the streets.

“The city of Austin loves us,” he says. “They think we’re on the verge of breaking the code.”

 

Brian J Reynolds

A woman is seen in a shelter built by California artist Gregory Kloen in Oakland.

Occupy Madison, an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement based in Madison, Wis., finished building its first fully functional tiny house last month. The 98-square-foot structure, complete with a bed, toilet and tiny kitchen, will serve as a template for 40 homes to follow, says Brenda Konkel, an Occupy Madison board member. It is hoped that the project, which depends on volunteer labor and community donations, eventually will end homelessness in their city.

“I think this is a solution for now,” says Konkel. “Our first house cost $5,000 to make, and we did it without asking for government help.”

But California artist Gregory Kloen, 43, says there’s an even cheaper and faster way. For the past several years, Kloen has singlehandedly built small, portable homes using salvaged materials he finds on the street. His cost? Less than $100 each.

“Stuff people just throw away on the street can give someone a viable home,” says Kloen, whose environmentally friendly structures are made of everything from wooden pallets to refrigerator parts. Kloen’s unique, whimsical designs are both artistic (“I make them cute and funny”) and practical (“I want them to work well, be strong and watertight.”)

“Now, I can roll my house down the street. Now the police don’t give me a hard time. I keep my house clean and I have no problems.”

Most importantly, each Kloen design is a thoughtful response to the problems faced daily by the homeless people in his community. For example, Oakland’s public safety laws require municipal workers to periodically sweep up and destroy the belongings of people living on the streets, something Kloen hopes to circumvent with his mobile home designs.

“I was sleeping outside on the freeway for two or three years,” recalls Oakland resident Cathryn Estelle Copeland, 39. “I was using cardboard for a cover. The police come there sometimes. If you don’t move fast enough they just take your stuff away.”

Copeland says having a tiny house changed her life.

“Now, I can roll my house down the street. Now the police don’t give me a hard time. I keep my house clean and I have no problems.”

Breaking the cycle

While billions of taxpayer dollars are allocated each year to support shelters and social service initiatives, homelessness remains a persistent problem in the U.S. In 2013, an estimated 610,000 people slept without shelter every night, according to a report by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Advocates contend that not enough effort is made to break the cycle of homelessness, while too much money is spent on punishing behavior related to it. A 2011 report published by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty says local governments routinely criminalize activities that go hand-in-hand with living on the street, such as sleeping in public spaces and loitering. Incarceration costs taxpayers $34,480 per inmate per year, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

“Homeless people spend excessive time in jail or prison, often for petty offenses such as loitering,” stated a 2011 Utah government report. “The penal system frequently serves as emergency shelter for the chronically homeless, at far greater cost than other more appropriate options.”

 

Brian J Reynolds

California artist Gregory Kloen, who builds small portable homes using salvaged materials, says an inexpensive structure is a way to keep someone safe and out of jail.

An inexpensive structure like a micro-pod – with insulation, a small bed and a place to store belongings – is a good, temporary solution to keep a person warm, safe and out of jail, says Kloen.

“Does it have merit as a solution to homelessness? As far as giving people a shelter, yeah, definitely. Is it a solution to homelessness? It’s an answer. An attempt.”

Historically, measures that offer temporary respite from homelessness have often failed, because the problems that cause it – poverty, addiction, mental and/or physical illness – are often chronic. But recent evidence shows that access to social services combined with the safety and security of a permanent home can be effective in breaking the cycle of chronic homelessness.

For instance, Utah’s “Housing First” program, which gives free, permanent “no strings attached” apartments to the chronically homeless, claims to be on track to eradicate the problem. The 8-year pilot program, which costs $11,000 per apartment annually, has a reported 74 percent success rate.

While some people believe individual micro-houses could provide the same benefit, others say turning the fantasy into a reality isn’t easy.

“There were concerns about safety and property values and noise and trash. I reminded them that these people were already living in our community.”

“Our city government [thought] the homes might be a magnet to crime, or make the city look bad,” admits Jay Rowe, executive director of Rochester Greenovation in upstate New York. Rowe says the organization’s project, Tiny Homes for the Homeless, was stalled by red tape and “a whole bunch of maybes.”

But Tiny Home proponents say they won’t give up.

“There were concerns about safety and property values and noise and trash,” recalls Occupy Madison’s Konkel. “I reminded them that these people were already living in our community.”

Estimating that 100-400 people sleep on the streets of Madison nightly, Konkel describes her police force as “very understanding and appreciative” of the Tiny Homes project. She hopes that having the comfort and protection of a real house will help Madison’s homeless rebuild their lives.

“Where there’s stability and a home base, safety and normalcy, the mental health issues some people have are alleviated,” she says. “It’s not cured but it’s easier to manage.”

Graham agrees. He says his Community First village is all about healing people who have experienced profound rejection from society, by welcoming them back into the community.

“People think if you build a bunch of houses you’ve ‘solved’ homelessness,” he says. “I don’t buy into the word ‘solution.’ It’s less an issue of ‘curative’ than ‘palliative.’ By virtue of relieving their suffering, we hope to make a positive impact. These are God’s beautiful, broken children.”

Ex combatiente de Angola vive en una alcantarilla

Cubanet

Moises Leonardo Rodriguez  

ARTEMISA, Cuba - Dagoberto Blanco Ledesma, de 66 años, duerme en una alcantarilla. Asegura que lleva 6 años pernoctando en las calles, a pesar de ser combatiente internacionalista en la guerra de Angola, no pide ayuda a las instituciones oficiales por falta de confianza en ellas.

Cuenta que abandonó su domicilio en el caserío Santa Isabel, del municipio Mariel en la provincia Artemisa, porque “yo estaba viviendo con un hermano mío que cada vez que se emborracha, por gusto, me cae a golpes, al otro día se lo dices y me dice que no, que eso es mentira, por eso ando yo acá en la calle”.

Continúa relatando que un fin de año estuvo tres días deambulando por las calles, alimentándose solo con pan y guarapo, regresaba tarde en la noche a su casa con el fin de evitar las agresiones del hermano hasta que “el 31 de diciembre salí y me perdí hasta el sol de hoy, de eso hace seis años. Aquí en Artemisa he estado durmiendo en una pila de lugares”.

Enumera, entre ellos: el hospital, la terminal de ómnibus, un comedor obrero y otros lugares de la periferia del pueblo de Artemisa, en los que pernoctan decenas de personas por razones diversas, la mayoría de la tercera edad, mujeres incluidas.

Para subsistir se emplea con campesinos que le pagan 40 pesos moneda nacional  (menos de dos dólares) por jornada o “recojo un puñado de guayabas y las vendo, pido un puñado de plátanos a algún campesino o los recojo en platanales estatales que se están pudriendo, hablo con el guardia y me da un puñado y los vendo”.

La alcantarilla donde duerme Dagoberto

Afirma que estuvo en Angola desde 1981 hasta 1983, “en ese entonces vivía yo con los viejos míos en Santa Isabel, mis padres Gregorio y Margarita que ya murieron”. “Al regreso de Angola me junté con una mujer ahí y tuve dos hijas con ella. Se casaron las dos hijas y se fueron para el norte hace unos cinco años” y desde entonces no ha sabido nada de ellas.

Responde a la pregunta de por qué no pide ayuda al gobierno diciendo “Ayuda ninguna voy a pedir. ¿Qué ayuda me pueden dar a mí con la cantidad de personal que hay durmiendo en la calle por ahí,  unos porque cayeron presos y la familia les vendió la casa, otros que la vendieron para tomar chispa” (bebida alcohólica casera de mala calidad) y otras causas que hacen que haya “miles de personas durmiendo en la calle”.

Para bañarse y lavar la ropa aprovecha un hueco a un lado de la carretera, cerca de la alcantarilla donde duerme, que se mantiene lleno de agua limpia por un salidero de una tubería del sistema de acueducto de Artemisa.

Concluye Dagoberto: “Aquí en Artemisa dondequiera hay una tubería rota, hay un derroche de agua tremendo, ¡mira a ver si la arreglan! ¿Y tu crees que van a arreglar el problema mío? ¿Qué me van a dar, una casa o darme otro puente mejor? Aquí en Artemisa no hay otro puente mejor que este”

La Timba: Una villa miseria rodea la Plaza de la Revolución

Cubanet

León Padrón Azcuy  

León Padrón Azcuy

LA HABANA, Cuba, enero, www.cubanet.org -Una prueba  del desinterés del  gobierno  cubano hacia su pueblo lo constituye  el barrio La Timba,  en El Vedado, muy cerca a la Plaza de la Revolución,  centro del poder comunista. La Timba sufre una terrible marginalidad,  incluso  por encima de otros barrios de La Habana.

Las ventajas que debiera suponer para una comunidad colindar con el Consejo de Estado y con la  avenida Paseo, -vía expedita para el traslado de los jefes de la revolución-, no  existen para La Timba. Irónicamente,  la pobreza que encierra en sus entrañas es tapiada con planchas de zinc durante  las realizaciones de actos conmemorativos y desfiles, a fin de esconderlos de las cámaras.

Los vecinos de allí se quejan de que nada  se ha hecho en favor de esta comunidad. Al contrario, varios centros que en el pasado desempeñaban funciones sociales importantes, han sido escindidos al convertirlos en albergues para damnificados,  pero no para los propios residentes del barrio, donde muchas casas se caen a pedazos por la falta de materiales y recursos.

Ahí están, convertidos en refugios, la otrora posada (casa de citas) de las calles 2 y 31,  y la Casa de la Cultura de 37 y Paseo, donde viven hoy más de  treinta familias que desde hace años esperan por un hogar. La posada, desde hace tiempo dejó de ser una alternativa para las necesidades sexuales de parejas sin hogar, y el otro lugar, entre otras cosas, vio truncas las clases de danza, ensayo de comparsas, y juegos de mesa (dominó) para personas de la tercera edad. Ni qué decir del proyecto socio-cultural contra el alcoholismo que allí tuvo lugar en su día.

Un nativo del barrio que vive desde hace mucho tiempo en uno de estos albergues, porque su casa se derrumbó, y que prefirió el anonimato para este reportaje,  dijo:

-Más  allá de promesas que terminaron en alguna pintura para enmascarar, jamás las autoridades de este Municipio se han preocupado en lo más mínimo por el deterioro de este barrio y mucho menos por la prosperidad de la gente. Mis abuelos y mis padres vivieron aquí antes de 1959; eran trabajadores, no ricos, pero no vivieron un infortunio tan grande como el que padecemos ahora.

En los últimos años,  en este barrio se han incrementado las construcciones de solares, utilizando los más increíbles materiales que la pobreza obliga, sin que las autoridades brinden algún apoyo. Solo los militares han sido beneficiados con la construcción de, al menos, dos edificios en esta zona: Uno  en la esquina de 6 y 39,  cercano al Consejo de Estado, compuesto por 32 apartamentos, pero solo  doce asignados a  pobladores de  La timba, a los que se les había derrumbado el solar. Los otros veinte, cedidos a oficiales de la policía.

La otra edificación de cinco plantas fue construida en la esquina de 35 y 4,  entregada  íntegramente  a  militares de la Dirección de Cárceles y Prisiones del Ministerio del Interior.

Si algún barrio de la capital cubana tiene razones suficientes para no agradecer nada al poder revolucionario, es La Timba. 55 años después de aquella “nacionalización” que se apoderó de todas las bellas edificaciones que rodean el centro de poder de Cuba, La Timba se erige hoy como testigo  de la infertilidad del régimen comunista, que nunca ha mirado hacia allí a pesar de tenerlo tan cerca.

Galeria de fotos  Aqui >>

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Smart refrigerators and TVs hacked to send out spam, according to a new report

NBC News.com

A LG representative shows a smartphone with Home Chat in front of a LG smart refrigerator on the final day of the 2014 International CES, January 10, 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The LG Smart Home system with the Home Chat smart platform allows users to communicate with home appliances via text message. AFP PHOTO / ROBYN BECKROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images

Julianne Pepitone

Et tu, refrigerator?

A new report shows cyberattacks aren’t relegated to laptops anymore: Now, even a fridge or a TV can send malicious emails.

Security firm Proofpoint has uncovered a cyberattack that involved the hacking of “smart” home appliances connected to the Internet. Hackers broke into more than 100,000 gadgets -- including TVs, multimedia centers, routers, and at least one fridge – and used the appliances to send out more than 750,000 malicious emails between December 23 and January 6.

The attack also included compromised laptops and tablets, but Proofpoint said about 25% of the emails were sent from appliances beyond the traditional Internet-connected gadgets.

According to Proofpoint, the cyberattack could be the first proven breach of the so-called “Internet of Things”: an exciting tech trend that promises a Jetsons-like future, with all of our home appliances and other gadgets connected to one another.

But as smart home devices – like Nest, the thermostat and smoke detector company Google bought for $3.2 billion this week – continue to grow more popular, Proofpoint’s report is a sobering reminder that anything connected to the Internet can potentially be hacked.

“The ‘Internet of Things’ holds great promise for enabling control of all of the gadgets that we use on a daily basis,” said Michael Osterman, principal analyst at messaging-focused research firm Osterman Research, wrote in Proofpoint’s report. “It also holds great promise for cybercriminals … to launch large and distributed attacks.”

To launch those types of large-scale attacks, hackers link up compromised devices to create what’s called a botnet: an army of “zombie” devices that attack other computers through tasks like overloading a website with traffic or, in this case, sending hundreds of thousands of spam emails.

These attacks can be more difficult to track as the world of Internet-connected devices expands far past laptops and tablets. In the attack Proofpoint detailed, no more than 10 emails were sent from any single IP address, making it tough to block based on location.

Perhaps worse: In “many cases,” the smart devices weren’t difficult to hack, according to Proofpoint. Instead, the appliances either were not set up correctly, or they used default passwords that were easy to find on public networks.

Proofpoint does have a vested interest in this issue, as a security firm that sells solutions to protect gadgets from such attacks.

But by 2020, research firm Gartner expects more than 30 billion Internet-connected devices will be in use worldwide – up exponentially from 2.5 billion in 2009.

As the Internet-connected world expands to thermostats, refrigerators and even window shades, so too grows the threat of potential cyberattacks -- even in the frozen foods aisle.

Google Builds a 'Nest' for Future of Smart Homes

breitbart

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE
AP Technology Writer
SAN FRANCISCO
When our Internet-connected gadgets and home appliances all learn to talk to each other, Google wants to be at the center of the conversation.

This imagined future is still a few years away, but Google is already preparing with its $3.2 billion acquisition of high-tech thermostat and smoke-detector maker Nest Labs.

The surprise deal announced earlier this week will provide Google Inc. with more tools to build a valuable hub for homes. It's a world of network-tethered toasters and tea kettles, or a so-called "Internet of Things," that is destined to reshape society, experts say, in the same way that smartphones have done in the seven years since Apple Inc. unveiled the iPhone.

The research firm Gartner Inc. expects more than 26 billion objects to be connected to the Internet by 2020, a figure that doesn't include personal computers, smartphones or tablets. That would be a nearly 30-fold increase from roughly 900 million Internet-connected things in 2009.

Google established itself as an instrumental player in smartphones with the 2008 release of Android, a free operating system that runs on more mobile devices than any other piece of software. Now, the company is gearing up for the advent of the smart home with the help of Nest Labs, a 300-employee company started in Palo Alto, Calif. less than four years ago. Tony Fadell, Nest's founder, is an Apple veteran who helped design the iPod and the iPhone.

As influential as smartphones have become, their role in understanding people's habits and preferences could be eclipsed once everything in the home has a computer chip and is connected to the Internet.

"Google bought Nest in order to learn about this world where even more information is going to be accessible by computers," said Forrester Research analyst Frank Gillett.

Nest Labs quickly won over gadget lovers with its 2011 release of an Internet-connected thermostat that learns to cool and heat homes to suit the needs of the inhabitants. Late last year, the company followed up with a smoke and carbon-monoxide detector equipped with voice technology and the ability to communicate with the company's thermostat. Nest hasn't said how many of its devices have been sold, though analysts believe they are in just a small fraction of homes. The products have only been available in the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom.

Google hasn't disclosed its specific plans for Nest, but analysts anticipate an entire line of Internet-connected home products will be coming to countries around the world. Some of those Nest devices could be melded with existing Google services in an effort to make people's lives easier. Such a move also would provide Google with the means to gather more insight that could be used to sell the digital advertising that generates most of the company's revenue.

In a blog post about the Google acquisition, Nest Labs co-founder Matt Rogers promised that customers' personal information will only be used for "providing and improving Nest's products and services. We've always taken privacy seriously and this will not change."

But that pledge won't preclude Google from incorporating its services with Nest's products, said Gartner analyst Angela McIntyre. For instance, Google already makes a digital assistant called "Google Now" that strives to learn what its users like and where they tend to go so it can provide helpful information without prompting. McIntyre believes Nest's products will teach Google Now to become more helpful so it can increasingly take over more of the mundane tasks in people's lives.

"They need to gather as much information as they can to understand the context in how we live our lives," McIntyre said.

Google also could plug its digital mapping software into Nest products so it could learn the layout of a home, said Brian Proffitt, a technology analyst who is also a management instructor at the University of Notre Dame. That knowledge could then be deployed to delegate such household chores as vacuuming to a robot that would be able to rely on the interior maps to navigate its way through an entire home without human help, Proffitt said.

A Google division run by Android creator Andy Rubin is working on various ideas for robots, though the Mountain View, Calif., company hasn't shared many details about its goals. Google's expansion into robotics is also being bolstered by a spate of acquisitions that included the recent purchase of Boston Dynamics, a U.S. military contractor that has already built a variety of contraptions that can be programmed to run at rapid speeds, leap high into the air and climb rocky terrains.

Even as it explores various technological frontiers, Google still makes most of its money from advertising tied to search requests. Acquiring and developing products with Internet connections and environmental sensors can only help Google get an even better grasp on people's interests. 
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