Geraldine’s Lament: New Home No Cure for Venezuela Shortages (32% poverty now)

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-07-28/geraldine-s-lament-gift-of-home-no-cure-for-venezuela-shortages


Geraldine is tired of hearing that she should be grateful for the apartment the Venezuelan government gave her last year. With the elevator out of action, water leaking through the ceiling and no gas supplies, she wishes she had never moved in.

The 31-year-old mother of two said she was given keys, but not ownership papers, for the apartment in Caracas after spending three years in a government shelter for those left homeless by torrential rains in 2010. She now spends much of her day lining up for the few subsidized goods left in the shops, before climbing the eight floors to her flat and cooking on a small electric stove.

“I feel that for the past year, all we have done is survive,” Geraldine said during an interview in the apartment, asking that her last name not be published for fear of government reprisal. “Conditions were better in the shelter, even when we had to share a bathroom.”

A government spending boom in the two years to April 2013 provided Geraldine with her new home and secured election victories for then-President Hugo Chavez, and after his death last year, for President Nicolas Maduro. Since then, government spending has stalled, inflation has tripled to more than 60 percent and a lack of dollars has led to shortages of everything from toilet paper to drinking water. As poverty levels rise, people like Geraldine say they are losing faith in Maduro.

Venezuela’s poverty rate rose to 32 percent at the end of last year from a record low 25 percent in 2012, according to the National Statistics Institute, or INE. That represents an additional 1.8 million people who live in families with less in income than 6,648 bolivars ($87 at the black market rate) a month.