Great Mission Housing Venezuela

President Hugo Chávez started the social missions in 2003 with the purpose of helping the most disadvantaged social sectors and guaranteeing essential rights such as health, education and food. The program aimed investing economic revenue from the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). Transparencia Venezuela, Transparency International's chapter in the country, described that the model allowed political support to the government at the time, but that "as the years went by, many social missions lost their social perspective" and focused on political activities characterized by discretionality and opacity. According to the government, under the program, the government provides residents with a long-term payment plan based on their means, calculating the payments on the building cost of the houses and not the market value of the property, that each resident retains their house for life and can pass the house on to their children. If a resident wishes to sell their house within thirty years of taking possession, the government has first refusal. Residents do not have full ownership rights over their homes. Countries with building contracts have included Russia, China and Belarus. == History ==

In 2014, the squatters of the Centro Financiero Confinanzas were resettled under the program in Cúa, to the south of Caracas. According to the Venezuelan Chamber of Construction, a total of 545,612 homes were built during the 12 years of Chávez's administration, between 1999 and 2010: 284,852 by the public sector and 260,760 by the private sector. According to the Venezuelan government figures, a million Venezuelans were rehoused under the GMVV by March 2016. In 2015, a woman hit President Nicolás Maduro on the head with a mango that had a message attached asking Maduro to help her find housing. The woman was granted a flat under the scheme afterwards. By 2016, opposition deputy Julio Borges said he had received complaints of the eviction of residents that were opposed to the government. The same year he proposed a bill that would give residents their properties title deeds with no extra costs and allow them to sell their homes once they received their deeds. The bill passed its first reading in the National Assembly made up of an opposition majority. Some residents were concerned that the opposition's bill would cause an increase in their housing debt. At least 30 persons were detained by the Bolivarian Intelligence Service (SEBIN) after the cacerolazo in Villa Rosa. Between 2011 and 2017 the Venezuelan government built 1.3 million new homes as part the GMVV programme. In 2017, government officials went apartment by apartment in Great Mission Housing buildings to pressure residents to vote in the 2017 Constituent Assembly election, registering them, ordering to vote and telling them that they would be taken to the polling centers. The Venezuelan government promised to deliver a total of five million houses. In 2018, Efecto Cocuyo's fact checker described the goal as unrealistic as it would require the Venezuelan government to build two houses per minute. In July 2023, Nicolás Maduro announced that the program had delivered 4.6 million houses. == Criticism ==

Corruption Armando.Info, a Venezuelan investigative journalist outlet, reported that Colombian businessman Alex Saab received US$159 million from the Venezuelan government to import housing materials between 2012 and 2013, but only delivered products worth US$3 million. On 25 January 2017, Housing Mission state and pro-government workers assembled in front of the headquarters of the Ministry of Housing and Habitat in Barquisimeto to protest the illegal dismissal of their workers and the failure to complete 161 houses in Carora, Torres municipality in Lara state, demanding a response. The president of the Unified Union of the Construction Industry of the state, Pedro Peña, stated that the shell corporation, called Incorsa, left the more than 80 workers without social benefits. The project started in 2013 and was paralyzed in 2014, when the workers demanded the labor benefits they were entitled to by law. The general manager of the project, Juan Gómez, said that there were already suspicions about the integrity of the project, given that construction materials were rarely received, with the sole exception of sand and cement. In 2017, the president of the Center of Engineers of the state of Zulia (CIDEZ), Marcelo Monnot, denounced inconsistencies between the figures offered by the national government on the investment in the mission's projects, and estimating that there was a $76 billion deficit, whose destination he demanded to be known. The president of the CIDEZ Housing Commission, José Contreras, also pointed out inconsistencies in the figures offered by Governor Francisco Arias Cárdenas. By 2017, according to a poll by Datanálisis, 93 percent of the population had not benefited from any new housing or government program in the last 17 years. In 2016, Enzo Betancourt described as false the figures offered by Nicolás Maduro regarding the delivery of new housing, stating that by that date the works had been paralyzed for three months. Enzo stated that the figures included the so-called "Barrio Nuevo Barrio Tricolor", existing shanty houses in slums that were being rebuilt, decorated and falsely presented as new buildings. On 30 August 2017, cracks in a Misión Vivienda building in Tanaguarenas, Vargas state, grew larger after a 4.5 magnitude earthquake; residents feared that the damage could cause the structures to collapse. Gustavo Izaguirre, dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the Central University of Venezuela, warned that there have been construction elements that make the buildings vulnerable in the event of an earthquake. == See also ==