In Cuba, the guardian angels of the houses left empty by emigration

Open the windows, sweep the floor, water the plants: faced with the mass emigration that has been affecting Cuba for three years, many of the island's inhabitants have become, in spite of themselves, the guardians of the countless homes left empty by relatives or neighbors.

Once a week, Alfredo Garcia, 58, works in the apartment entrusted to him by a neighbor who moved to Spain with her family six months ago. To prevent theft, she asked him to leave a few lights on and give the apartment a semblance of life.

A woman walks past a building for sale in Havana, October 1, 2024 © AFP – YAMIL LAGE

A united Alfredo Garcia crosses the street and does his weekly chore. The building, located in a relatively well-off neighborhood in western Havana, has only two out of four occupied apartments. Around his house, other neighbors have left.

“I'm the only one who stayed, all my friends from this block have emigrated,” the fifty-year-old who has lived in the neighborhood since he was a child tells AFP.

Fear of endangering the properties she looks after prompts a 72-year-old Havana retiree to request anonymity to tell AFP that she has to look after the apartments of her brother, sister-in-law and cousin, all three of whom emigrated to the United States in the space of two years.

She also has to keep an eye on her daughter's apartment, which has been living in Spain for seven years.

Houses closed in a residential area of ​​Havana, Cuba, on August 5, 2024, after their occupants left © AFP – YAMIL LAGE

“We open them and spend a day or two in each one” once a month, explains the septuagenarian who lives in eastern Havana and pays everyone's bills to make it appear that the owners are temporarily absent.

The deep economic crisis that has hit the communist island for four years, with power cuts, shortages of food, fuel and medicine, has caused a wave of emigration unprecedented since the Castro Revolution of 1959.

A woman walks past a house for sale in Havana, October 1, 2024 © AFP – ADALBERTO ROQUE

Cuba, which officially had 11.1 million inhabitants before the pandemic, now has fewer than 10 million, according to the authorities, who have not organized a census since 2012.

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Between January 2022 and August 2024, more than 700,000 Cubans emigrated to the United States, either regularly or irregularly, not counting the flow of migrants to Latin America and Europe, for which there are no official overall figures.

– “Gift” –

Houses are closed in a residential area of ​​Havana, October 1, 2024 © AFP – ADALBERTO ROQUE

This situation has depressed the Cuban real estate market, which emerged in 2011 when residents were allowed to buy or sell their homes. Previously, they could only exchange them.

The brief thaw between Havana and Washington under Democratic President Barack Obama (2009-2017) then gave the sector a boost, with real estate investments in tourism in particular.

“The multi-systemic crisis and the wave of migration have caused the real estate market to collapse,” writes Emilio Morales, a Cuban economist based in Miami, in an article for the Havana Consulting Group consultancy, published in mid-2024.

A man rides a tricycle past an apartment for sale in Havana, October 1, 2024 © AFP – YAMIL LAGE

Raidel Gonzalez, a 34-year-old driver, also dreams of emigrating. “I want to go with my family” to Mexico City, he said, contacted by AFP by telephone via an ad posted on a Facebook page dedicated to real estate transactions.

He put his five-room house up for sale there seven months ago and has already had to lower the sale price by $10,000.

“The problem is that people are almost giving away their house to have money to leave,” another owner who does not want to give her name and is selling her apartment in the working-class Cerro neighborhood told AFP.

The Vedado neighborhood, where some apartments are empty due to the departure abroad of their owners, in Havana, October 1, 2024 © AFP – ADALBERTO ROQUE

Some ads are particularly explicit: “For sale with everything inside”, “As soon as you buy, you move in”, it is written in reference to the owners who leave on site furniture and household appliances.

In an attempt to maintain a link with the growing number of Cubans living abroad, the country passed a law in July that guarantees them the right to retain ownership of their homes, regardless of the length of their stay outside the country. Until then, they lost ownership if they lived abroad for more than two years without returning to the island.

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