LIANE HANSEN, host:
In Venezuela's capital, Caracas, most of the poor live in shacks on a muddy hillside overlooking the city. Others have less than that to call home. Now the mayor has come up with a plan he thinks may provide better housing. He wants to seize the city's two main golf courses.
From Caracas, Jens Erik Gould reports.
JENS ERIK GOULD: The steep hills surrounding Caracas are blanketed with dense slums. Ramshackle homes are crammed cheek by jowl, separated by narrow garbage strewn streets and stairways. Water only reaches some homes two or three days a week. Some slum areas lack sufficient electric service and others do not have telephone access. Frequent rains sometimes cause houses to collapse in mudslides.
(Soundbite of a crowd)
GOULD: Residents of poor barrios often gather outside the government's Housing Ministry to protest their poor living conditions. Among them is Patricia Duran(ph), who lives in a hillside barrio in western Caracas. She says recent rains have made her house and others nearby uninhabitable.
Ms. PATRICIA DURAN (Resident): (Through translator) If you saw where we're living right now, there are waterfalls. The stairs are really bad. We're human beings but we're living like animals out there.
GOULD: But while the poor in Caracas fight for the basics, the rich enjoy luxury. Mansions line winding, tree-shaded streets in wealthy neighborhoods woven through the city's east. Sprawled in their midst is the nearly 200-acre Caracas Country Club. In addition to an 18-hole golf course, the 75-year-old club has horse stables and tennis courts, and has long been a bastion for Venezuela's elite.
But Caracas's Mayor Juan Barreto says this land must be opened to all Venezuelans, not just to the rich. In an announcement made late last month, Barreto ordered the seizure of this club and another, the Valle Arriba Country Club, which sits near the U.S. Embassy.
MAYOR JUAN BARRETO (Venezuela): (Through translator) This is a first step towards the democratization of land, the social use of what should be public spaces. It's to give a new social sense to the city, so the city can be enjoyed by everyone and not be a privatized city under a neo-liberal concept.
GOULD: Barreto told state television that homes for as many as 50,000 people would be built on the golf courses. But Caracas Country Club president Fernando Zozaya says the mayor's plan to seize his club is unrealistic.
Mr. FERNANDO ZOZAYA (President, Caracas Country Club): (Through translator) There are many areas that are much more adequate, have easier access, would cost a lot less, and could speed up people's housing needs. Can you imagine the chaos this would bring? How are they going to do it?
GOULD: It's not clear how, or even if, they're going to do it. Mayor Barreto - a close ally of President Hugo Chavez - justified the planned seizures under a federal policy to redistribute privately owned land to the poor. However, he appears not to have gotten the government's approval before making his decree.
Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel said the mayor acted on his own, and that the national government did not support the move.
Carlos Machado studies property rights and urban development at Caracas's Institute of Higher Administration Studies. Machado is a Chavez critic who says the golf course uproar highlights the government's failure to meet its housing promises.
Mr. CARLOS MACHADO (Caracas Institute of Higher Administration Studies): (Through translator) All this about the golf courses is a way of distracting attention. They say, you don't have houses because there are people that play golf. It's not a sincere message. You don't have a house because you don't have enough income to buy one.
GOULD: Official estimates suggest Venezuela needs 1.6 million new homes to meet low income housing needs. The country's Real Estate Chamber says only 220,000 new homes have been built in the nearly eight years Chavez has been in power, almost half of them this year.
For NPR News, I'm Jens Erik Gould in Caracas. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
