[van-discuss] Re: [van-announce] Help a youth go to Cuba

[Geordie Birch]

said Marcel Hatch (on 2002-11-05),

> Their is a housing shortage in Cuba but no one lives on the streets
> or sleeps at night without shelter. This is because families all stay
> together in one house and those without family share housing with
> friends. It's tight and it's uncomfortable but it is how Cubans
> survive and they do it with dignity and with pride to ensure no one
> suffers. This example is not unlike how Canadians and people in the
> U.S. did things during the Great Depression. I know, this is how my
> grandparents lived.

Are you aware that many people in Canada and the US live this way now?
Unlike in Cuba, we call them "homeless."  I have lived like this and will
again.

I guess you and I differ on the definition of homeless.  I already posted
the following link (and as such am in gross violation of netiquette) but
am afraid that it was overlooked in the flood:

http://www.campus.ncl.ac.uk/cardo/virtualconf/papers/Definitions.htm
<-- `This paper explores the diverse definitions of homelessness in 10
developing countries and how those definitions have developed. Definition
is important because "... most researchers agree on one fact: who we
define as homeless determines how we count them."'

Homelessness is more than simply rooflessness, and to say that
homelessness does not exist in Cuba erodes the dignity of the many Cubans
living in substandard housing.

Geordie.