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Art and Visual Anthropology, AVA General Posts, Blog

Sanne Derks, Martijn Koster and Stephanie Ketterer: Crumbling down: Visualizing housing and imagining the state in Havana

Image 1: View over Habana Vieja. Photo by Sanne Derks

“Ironic, isn’t it? Socialism is supposed to take care of the poor. But here in Cuba, if you don’t have money, you don’t have rights. I assure you that if I had 1,000 dollars, I would give 500 to one bureaucrat, and 500 to another, and within 72 hours they would show up with a mansion to live in.” Maryanelli folds her arms. Her eyes spit fire. Barefoot she stands in the doorway of her usofructo,a small housing unit provided by the state, in the dilapidated neighbourhood of Habana Vieja. She is a hotel housekeeper. She tells how happy she is with the tips that tourists leave behind for her. Now Maryanelli tries to catch some air outside, because the heat is unbearable inside. The fan is not working due to power cuts which have become a daily occurrence in her block. Anger manifests in Maryanelli’s voice as she explains: “They summoned me to leave. The usofructo I am staying in will be demolished, because of the risk of collapse. It is the third time already, as my previous places have collapsed also. And now they send me to this cute patrimonial building, but I refuse to go. I will never get property papers there. As it is a patrimonial building it will always remain the property of the state, whereas I want a permanent place to stay with my two children.” She lights a cigarette and continues as she exhales: “You know what? The state promised us a house already in 1969, after my grandmothers’ house collapsed. They gave us this file, black on white. I inherited this right to a home from my grandmother, who was sent to a shelter. And here I am, nearly 60 years later, three collapses further, and still no house to live in…”

In Cuba, since the instalment of the Revolutionary regime in 1959 the state has promised to take care of housing for its citizens. The right to housing is enshrined in the constitution of the socialist country which is currently facing one of the most severe crises in its history due to external and internal factors (Boudreault-Fournier & Gauthier, 2024; Köhn, 2024). Challenges include post-covid recovery, monetary reforms, a bankrupt government and even stricter sanctions from the US than at any time in the last sixty years, the most recent consequence of which is the current oil embargo. These factors have led to hyperinflation, scarcity of food, electricity, gasoline and water, as well as social unrest. As always, both the state’s and peoples’ struggles are multiscalar (Kalb and Mollona, 2018; Mollona, 2014) and include those for housing (Acosta et al., 2020). Long before this most recent crisis it had already been difficult to find a decent and safe place to live in Havana (Carter 2008), but the state’s current obvious incapacity to address its housing problems engenders more and more criticism from the residents. People are increasingly openly blaming the government for its failure to manage basic needs such as housing, electricity or water (Derks, 2024). Under the current circumstances, neither the socialist state nor the impoverished residents have the means to maintain the city centre’s old colonial buildings. While the state blames the ongoing shortage of materials to the embargo imposed by the US (since the 1960s), many working-class residents have lost patience and now blame the socialist state for not providing the necessary services, materials or adequate salaries for housing maintenance that socialism has historically held out as a promise.

It is not easy to find official, reliable, statistics on housing collapses and the condition of buildings in the Cuban capital Havana. According to official figures, approximately 35% of buildings in Cuba are in poor condition (Leiva, 2024), and 850,000 residential structures need maintenance and repairs, but we expect these figures to be higher. An architect who works as a street-level bureaucrat in the Housing Department of Habana Vieja—we call him Pedro— estimates that as much as 70% of the houses in Havana Vieja need immediate repair or may collapse. A recent internal document with statistics on the housing stock for the city of Havana reports a total of 550,000 homes in the capital, of which 121,000 are in poor condition and 129,000 are in ‘regular’ condition, meaning they need maintenance to prevent further deterioration. This would imply that almost half of the buildings in the city are currently in need of repair.

Yearly, Havana faces 1,000 partial or full collapses. For decades the capital has had the largest number of collapses, deaths caused by collapse, and the largest housing deficit in Cuba. Only in the past half year, several deadly collapses were reported in Habana Vieja. Havana’s proximity to the sea, heavy rainfall, and hurricanes increase the need for proper and regular maintenance of its buildings. After hurricane San Rafael (2024) 460 collapses were registered. Havana is also dealing with a significant housing shortage. In 2017, Castellanos (2017) quoted the city’s Shelters Director, who said that 35,000 families, totalling 116,000 people, lived in shelters, and another 34,000 were in need of it. The average stay in shelters, the Director said, is no less than 20 years.

In Cuba, speaking about housing is speaking about the state. For her current research on state-resident relations in the field of housing in Havana, anthropologist and documentary photographer Derks has conducted fieldwork in Havana for 10 months since 2025. During this period, she took the photographs featured in this essay, visited working-class residents, and followed street-level bureaucrats responsible for monitoring the condition of buildings in Havana. Since 2005, she has stayed in Cuba regularly for different projects and has lived in Havana since 2023. Over these 20 years she has witnessed the city crumble. Koster visited Cuba three times between 2018 and 2025 for shorter periods in which he carried out fieldwork with Derks. Ketterer visited Cuba in 2025 and works closely with the others on this project.

For this blog, we build on Gupta’s (1995) approach to understanding the state as constructed through peoples’ imagination and their everyday practices. We further draw inspiration from Navaro-Yashin’s (2002) work on the faces of the state: the various forms in which state representatives present the state to the people through practices, discourses and institutions. We have studied the various faces and imaginaries of the state as they are given shape among residents who experience housing problems. We also analysed how street-level-bureaucrats working in the Housing Department of Habana Vieja come to embody the state in diverse and contradictory ways during their face-to-face encounters with residents.

Currently, most of the attention focused on Cuba centres on the geopolitical situation and the measures taken by the US government against Cuba and other countries in the region. In this essay, while we take this geopolitical context into account, we focus primarily on the daily reality as experienced by working-class residents and bureaucrats in Havana, and on their ambiguous views of the state. Residents, such as Maryanelli, blame the state for not providing housing—or, more generally, for not taking good care of them. At the same time, they clearly still expect the state to fulfil its socialist promises of housing and other basic necessities. Bureaucrats represent the state when they visit residents, explain policies and make promises. Yet, they also often distance themselves from the state, aware of its shortcomings in practice, often prompted by the housing problems they face in their own personal lives.

In addition to describing people’s ambiguous views and practices, we present a selection of Derks’ photos to visualize them. The photos show the material reality of buildings and people’s practices, while also capturing present-day imaginaries of a state that is increasingly contested and visibly crumbling. They “take us deeper into the sensory knowledge” (Crowder and Cartwright 2021:3) of housing and residents’ imaginaries of the state and “operate as a form of collage, with images being read individually and also within a wider visual narrative” (Sutherland 2016:115). As Squire (2016) suggests in her photo essay in Focaalblog, photography makes it possible to break through linear narratives in written texts and showcase heterogeneous, complex realities effectively. In addition, as we show in this essay, visualizing housing as a basic human need and a primary government responsibility, as claimed by Cuban socialism, may contribute to a deeper understanding of people’s imaginations of the state. Housing, as a convergence of matter and meaning, seems to coincide with peoples’ imaginaries of the state: instead of providing the promised shelter and care, things are collapsing.

Image 2: A resident stands in the patio of a precarious solar, an old colonial building in which several families reside. This one is at high risk of collapsing. In an attempt to find a temporary solution, the state decided to strut the space to delay collapse and prevent immediate eviction. This photo viscerally illustrates how, under current circumstances, the Cuban state is no longer able to fulfil one of its core promises: the right to decent, affordable and safe housing. Photo by Sanne Derks
Image 3: Cadets sing and shout during the 1st of May Parade in Havana in 2025. The imaginary of the state expressed during this national celebration exudes revolutionary values such as solidarity and unity, and pays tribute to the workers. The celebration’s coherent, unifying and optimistic discourse is a world apart from the material conditions of the houses Derks photographed and the experiences of the residents we talked to, most of whom live under precarious circumstances, lacking safe homes, water, electricity and the resources to obtain sufficient and healthy food. Photo by Sanne Derks
Image 4: Pedro, whom we introduced above, is a 65-old street-level bureaucrat who works for the Housing Department in Habana Vieja as an arquitecto de emergencia, an emergency architect. When houses collapse, or are in danger of collapsing, he is immediately sent to the site to draw up a technical report on the condition of the building. He can issue a repair order or a complete or partial demolition order. At present, however, the former almost never happens, because houses are in such poor condition. After a demolition order, he also notifies the Housing Department that the residents must be sent to a shelter, although there are hardly any places available. Ironically, Pedro’s own house is in a generally precarious state and has a leaking roof. He cannot afford a mattress for the folding bed on which he sleeps. Many street-level bureaucrats live under similar circumstances. While they represent the socialist state as bureaucrats in their visits to residents, in our interviews they often present themselves as disconnected from—and even abandoned by—the state. One of them told us: “I feel betrayed. I have worked for the Housing Department my entire life, but I do not have a solid roof over my head. There is nothing social about socialism.” Photo by Sanne Derks
Image 5: In the Housing Department of Habana Vieja, bureaucrats often complain about the bad working conditions: There are frequent power outages, no computers, no ventilation and no daylight. An endless chain of paperwork dictates lengthy and often never-ending procedures. Working-class residents tell us that they have lost their trust in Cuban bureaucracy. Reasons they mention for their discontent are corruption—bureaucrats often try to earn extra money a la izquierda (under the table)—the long time to process complaints and requests, and the general inefficiency of the system. Photo by Sanne Derks
Image 6: A street-level bureaucrat we call Claudia, who also works for the Housing Department of Havana Vieja, climbs the old staircase of a multi-family building at the emblematic Prado Street in Habana Vieja to visit the residents. She visits residents who are experiencing conflicts related to cohabitation. She listens to peoples’ complaints, collects testimonies and tries to mediate in housing-related disputes. When people get angry with her—which frequently happens—she uses her position as a state representative and says: “Shouting at a state functionary is a crime under the Cuban constitution, and if you continue to shout, you will end up in prison.” In more private conversations, she describes herself as dissociated from the state. She says she feels “enslaved by the state.” Recently, she confronted her superiors and told them: “I haven’t had gas for several days. You have the contacts and the position to solve this, but none of you care. And I am supposed to care about other residents’ problems when I can’t even cook a meal in my own home?” Photo by Sanne Derks
Image 7: A family sits with all their belongings in the colonnade in front of their collapsed house in Habana Centro. They tell us they live here on the street to pressure the government to take care of them. They waited for three days for the bureaucrats to take them to another place. The fridge is connected to an extension cord that they installed themselves. Their situation illustrates how people, on the one hand, continue to make claims on the socialist state and, on the other hand, take matters into their own hands—how they still relate to the idea of socialism, yet at the same time feel deeply frustrated by it. Photo by Sanne Derks
Image 8: The Urban Planning Department of Habana Vieja monitors compliance with building regulations. It has a waiting room where waiting can take forever. Habana Vieja is an overpopulated municipality. Overpopulation has forced residents to build creatively inside and outside their homes in search of more living space. Residents come to the Urban Planning Department when they require legal approval of construction work they wish to carry out. However, as bureaucratic processes are cumbersome, many people prefer to build illegally and pay a fine, or bribe a bureaucrat afterwards, rather than go through the time-consuming legal procedures necessary for obtaining a permit. Photo by Sanne Derks
Image 9: Retired Yolanda lives in a shelter in Havana’s periphery about 10 km from Habana Vieja. When her house collapsed more than 11 years ago, the Housing Department promised to find her a new home within 6 months. After 11 years, she has lost hope. The roof of her shelter is made of fibre cement, which means it is extraordinarily hot in her house. “If I could say something to the bureaucrats of the Housing Department,” she says, “I would invite them to my house and stay in the unbearable heat for 20 minutes. So they can experience what I have to go through day by day.” Photo by Sanne Derks
Image 10: For a technical report, Pedro takes a picture of a floor that needs to be demolished. Bureaucrats find creative ways to increase their side incomes from such assessments. One bureaucrat told us how he collaborates with a private construction company and a private demolition company at the same time. If the building is ‘repairable’ he tries to convince his superiors to work with the construction company and takes a percentage. “But it has to be credible. And if I need money urgently, I sometimes give a demolition order. They [the demolition company] give me less, but it is quick and at least it’s something.” Pedro also says that bureaucrats nowadays give more demolition orders than necessary, just to get money quickly and survive on a daily basis. Photo by Sanne Derks
Image 11: The people in this shelter live in Monte street, which used to be a commercial area. By law, it is forbidden to use commercial areas for housing, but the state does it anyway, because of lack of space for the number of people needing shelter. These buildings often lack adequate living conditions such as toilets or kitchens. In 2019, the state introduced a law encouraging people to create basic amenities at their own expense, in exchange for property rights. The conditions for this were extended and simplified in 2025. Several residents told us, realistically, that they see this as a way for the state to gradually transfer responsibility to the residents, because it acknowledges that it no longer has the resources to provide for their housing. At the same time, they see it as an opportunity to get ownership, become more independent from the state, and maybe have more opportunities in life. Photo by Sanne Derks
Image 12: A couple descends from a makeshift staircase in a crumbling building in Habana Vieja. Although the socialist state promises housing for all, the realistic possibility of having a decent home is increasingly becoming a privilege solely for people with money. The current crisis condemns the growing group who have nothing to offer or bribe, whether it be money or social networks, to wait it out, often until their homes collapse. Photo by Sanne Derks

These photographs and our broader research on housing in Havana demonstrate how people experience and imagine the state during the current crisis. Facing the deteriorating housing conditions in the city, they give expression to their—largely very critical—ideas about the state. Even state employees openly criticize the state for not providing for the population, and for failing to pay a decent salary to civil servants. They also use this criticism to legitimize the bribes they receive. These bribes create an ambivalent relationship between residents and street-level bureaucrats. On the one hand, the bribes give residents (who can afford them) a certain degree of control over their situation and the opportunity to smoothen or expedite otherwise endless processes. On the other hand, they reinforce negative feelings about the state which obviously does not work unconditionally for everyone—contrary to its official socialist narrative and within a complex context of extremely limited resources.

As we have shown, the Cuban state at this point offers no or only make-shift solutions to housing issues. The houses in the photos in this essay embody this failure. Buildings collapse or are demolished, leaving less and less space to house people, while more and more of them are homeless or living in high-risk situations. At the same time, both working-class residents and street-level bureaucrats keep on claiming certain rights—to housing and other basic necessities—from the socialist state that they may not claim in other Caribbean countries. They (still) perceive the state as a possible and desired provider of goods and services—and the street-level bureaucrats also reproduce this ‘face’ of the state in their interactions with residents. At the same time, both residents and bureaucrats see the socialist state as an institution that falters with regard to housing as well as with the revolution in general.

The research, including the photography, for this essay are part of the POPULAR project, which is financed through the European Research Council (ERC) under the Horizon Europe research and innovation program (Consolidator Grant, agreement no. 101087109).

Sanne Derks is an anthropologist and documentary photographer, based in Havana, Cuba. Currently, she is a postdoctoral researcher at Wageningen University, the Netherlands, where she focuses on shifting imaginaries of the state around housing struggles in Havana. She holds a master’s in psychology (2003, Radboud University), a PhD in Anthropology (2009, Radboud University), and a master’s in Photojournalism (2016, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona).

Martijn Koster is an Associate Professor in the Sociology of Development and Change Group, Wageningen University. His research interests include (in)formal resident-state relationships, politics, housing, and urban development. Currently, he is PI of POPULAR, a research project with ethnographic case studies in Havana (Cuba), Medellín (Colombia) and Recife (Brazil), financed through an ERC Consolidator Grant.

Stephanie Ketterer is a political anthropologist and Associate Professor with the Sociology of Development and Change Group, Wageningen University. Her research interests lie at the intersections of the anthropology of the state, infrastructures, and datafication. She just launched a new NWO-Vidi project on everyday politics surrounding rural data centers.

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Cite as: Derks, S., Koster, M., and Ketterer, S. 2026. “Crumbling down: Visualizing housing and imagining the state in Havana” Focaalblog, May 25. https://www.focaalblog.com/2026/05/25/sanne-derks-martijn-koster-and-stephanie-ketterer-crumbling-down-visualizing-housing-and-imagining-the-state-in-havana/