Popularity contest or solution to Colombia´s housing for the poor?
On Saturday I read in El Tiempo that the Ministry of Housing tops the polls with the most popular minister in President Santos´cabinet. I’d like to know why? What makes this person the most successful minister, or at least the most popular? Who did they ask when they did the survey? Does anybody know?
All I know about the Ministry of Housing is that it is behind a project to give away for free 100,000 houses all over Colombia. But what was the intention of the creation of this ministry beyond this project?
What is its mission, and what purpose does it serve the nation to have created such ministry?
In the same newspaper I see editorials that ring the alarm for the authorities to prepare for the coming rainy season. They say the State should be taking action, helping to move entire populations who currently live on dangerous or unsuitable lands.
Isn´t this a housing problem? Has the Ministry of Housing taken action? Has this ministry done anything to resolve this? Has it even taken a position?
Someone else will soon be in charge of the ministry now that German Vargas Lleras looks set to leave office for political reasons. I suppose to reap the ground that he has soiled. But what has his legacy been? Why is he so “popular”? Has any long term State Policy been drafted with regards to the issues mentioned above or any others…? Can anybody help enlighten me a bit?
Correct me if I am wrong: the president created this ministry to assist in their plan of giving free housing to people in diverse parts of the country, and Vargas Lleras has been very diligent in doing so; showing up as the giver of free homes to the poor.
In my mind, this looks very similar to the assisting model of the Bolivarian Revolution, where they don’t teach people how to fish; they give them the fish and just wait for people to remember such “generosity” when election time arrives. Next year is election year in Colombia. Is it a coincidence?
Am I missing something here? I suppose I am because nobody in the media, that I’m aware of, has raised their eyebrows. It must be perfectly legitimate to open up a ministry to give homes away and then walk away with political aspirations having earned a “favorable image”.
In my last article I wrote about the importance of education to help change the culture in the country and make for more accountability and empowerment, so continuing with that idea, I wouldn’t oppose to a plan where in coordination with the Ministry of Education, people were trained on the skills necessary to learn to build homes, and schools and hospitals, maybe through Sena.
The Ministry of Housing would run a study to determine which the better places for human settlements would be and, in coordination with the other institutions that would have a say, help build the new towns in those areas that have been so depressed due to the acuteness of the violence problem.
After all, if they are giving back the land to those who used to possess it, wouldn’t it be only logical to plan the right way to give this people the chance to get back their lives?
So what of the Ministry for Housing? Was it just set up for Vargas Lleras? Will we see a new minister with a new set of promises? Colombia´s housing problems are complex and grave. The new houses are just a start, a drop in the ocean. A long term strategy is required, a strategy that worries less about popularity and more on what´s in the nation´s long term benefit.
I agree with you that the Ministry of Housing has done this in an opportunistic, cynical and rather cack-handed way.
Nevertheless, there is more to the assisting model of the Bolivarian Revolution than you grant. It has the backing of some of the few original, forward-thinking economists today.
By my understanding, a hand-out is very often better than a hand-up.
I know that runs counter to how many of us have been conditioned but our understanding must change. The idea that wealth is created by human ingenuity and by our economic activity is absurd, outdated and anthropocentric. The wealth is the planet. We don’t create it; we inherit it. We should feed, clothe and shelter ourselves using this inheritance, not abusing it. Most economic activity is a burden that squanders wealth.
The modern Colombian city is a good example – all those people getting up early to sit in traffic to go to jobs every day. Most of them don’t work in any meaningful sense – they just do jobs because they need a job; they don’t earn – they just get paid. Their real contribution: they pollute. Colombia’s wealth remains rural.
Is it better to teach someone how to fish or to give them a fish? I think both future generations and fish everywhere would join me in saying, it’s better to give them a fish.