Housing Mission currently builds 225,000 homes across the country

Minister of Popular Power for Housing and Habitat, Ricardo Molina, said Thursday that about 225,000 decent homes are currently under construction across the country.

"We continue to progress toward the goal of building 3 million homes by 2019, as agreed in the 2013-2019 Homeland Plan written by commander Hugo Chavez to ensure the well being of our people," he told the media during the delivery of 151 apartments to Caracas families, in the Ciudad Tiuna housing development in the Libertador municipality of Caracas.

He added that the national government is about to conclude home number 600,000, and indicated that in the Capital District 30,000 homes have been delivered and other 13,000 are still under construction.

Molina highlighted the involvement of organized communities, both in the construction process as in the development of support groups that are formed in the neighborhoods.

"We promote grassroots organization, since each of these homes become households of the country and from there multifamily management committees are constituted, then they are incorporated into the community council to assess the needs of the sector and define strategies to resolve them," he said.

Meanwhile, the head of government of the Capital District, Jacqueline Faria, recalled that since its creation in 2010, the Great Housing Mission Venezuela has been committed to serve 19,000 Caracas families whose houses fell down due to torrential rains between December 2010 and early 2011, and that were settled on unstable ground.

"Of this total there are still 1,300 refugees, but we continue building homes for families living in shelters, and for all those who applied for in the mission," she said.

The Grand Housing Mission Venezuela was created by President Hugo Chavez in 2011, since then it has been unified the efforts of public and private sector, the organized community and the experience of other nations, with the aim of solving the deficit target of decent and safe housing units.

The goal of this social program is to achieve 3 million homes by 2019, to pay the historic debt of home deficit with the Venezuelan population.

The cost of the house varies according to income: the very poorest get a 100% subsidy, those on twice the minimum wage get 50%. At four times the minimum wage the subsidy disappears. Banks are obliged to put 20% of their funding into mortgages to back up the program.

AVN