A few years ago, Magdalena bought a set of dishes that she dreamed of using for the first time in the home that the State could give her after she was left homeless in 2012, when the earth slid in Catia, west of Caracas, due to the rains, and her home collapsed along with those of 60 other families. At that moment he ended up in an abandoned building on José Ángel Lamas Avenue, which was already a refuge for other affected families. Some of them gained access to housing—even in La Guaira, which they lost again after the earthquake—but Magdalena was never able to leave there. In 2025, after 13 years, he died while waiting, with his box of dishes still unused.
The refugees who are still waiting for the granting of a house by the State in Venezuela have been accumulating throughout different tragedies. The best known was the landslide in Vargas in 1999, which began the occupation of abandoned buildings and left the way open for the victims who would come in the last 15 years: inhabitants of unplanned constructions in popular neighborhoods in the west of Caracas and La Guaira, who suffered the collapse of their house or the declaration of uninhabitability due to the rains of the years that followed. Hundreds of families were left homeless and without a permanent solution.
Moraima, a resident of Magdalena, goes up and down four floors of that same building every day—where 10 refugee families remain—despite her osteoarthritis, instability in her ligaments, and grade 4 cartilage deficiency that does not allow her to bend her knees. This condition forces him to use a cane, walk slower than he can, and pray that nothing falls on the ground, since he cannot bend down. He lives with his son Abraham – a patient with severe autism, who barely obeys some of his commands – and his brother, who has heart and kidney disease. “If it shakes again, run down the stairs,” one of the engineers told him after evaluating the state of the columns after the earthquakes. “But how do I run with my condition?” he asks.
Since then, the concern is not only that she will be assigned a home, but also the state of the one she now lives in, which she calls “humanized space” because it is not an apartment, but a kind of cubicle to which, over the last 14 years, she has added mattresses, sheets that divide the spaces and some appliances.
A few years ago, Moraima was approved for a loan of 8,000 bolivars (about $10) to buy a house. But, at that price, he only got ranches in favelas that he cannot access due to his disability. Since then, he waits for either higher credit or a more convenient location. However, after several devaluations, in addition to the fact that the money does not reach them, the turn in the “secondary market”, which is the name of the credit activation plan for refugee housing, works almost like a lottery. Who knows when it will be his turn again.
In the same wait, 110 families remain who have arrived at the Torre Pomarrosa de Catia in the last 16 years in conditions that not only have to do with natural disasters. There are people affected by supposed security operations called OLP, state workers and families living on the street.
The latter is the case of Yarcelis, a 41-year-old woman and mother of 6 children - one of them with autism and microcephaly - who has lived in the tower for 10 years with the two youngest and her mother, who suffers from prolapse.
Yarcelis doesn't work. He supports himself with the help that his eldest daughter and the stepmother of his children send him, in addition to the alms he asks for. "I would like to go wherever they give me because imagine. With so many things, sometimes you get depressed, because sometimes you don't even have enough to eat, even if you have the internet," he says. However, she has not tried to get out on her own: "I have always been waiting, because here they say that if you speak or say something... They scare you, well. There are many things."
The Pomarrosa door is locked after 10 pm and no one can enter or leave. The neighbors share a bathroom with 20 other people even though water does not arrive every day and they are prohibited from opening the windows. “They keep us here as if we were cockroaches,” says Yarcelis.
On the day of the seismic doublet, for example, the families experienced the aftershocks enclosed. “They are living in cubicles attached to a State institution and they have to have written authorization from our institution to be able to go out at night or receive visitors, because they are not owners,” explains Marioxis Barrios, an official with the Presidential Commission of Dignified Shelters.
The Government of the Capital District has 398 families in this situation distributed between five shelters - for affected people, in places that would be temporary - and four shelters - which are invasions permitted by the State in abandoned buildings where hotels, airlines, museums or banks once operated, and now people with "social cases" live. The shelters are guarded by the Cuadrillas Defensoras de la Paz (Cupaz) that Nicolás Maduro created in 2019 to impose social and political control in the communities, so free expression does not exist there.
At the Posada de Catia shelter, the children who were born there play with a ball that no longer bounces. In the background there are some water tanks that they also use as a swimming pool, and a neighbor who has two pigs, a couple of chickens and some ducks that live with everyone else. “When I get the house, maybe I will kill them,” says Raúl, who lived in the Federico Quiroz sector of Catia until 2010, when his home collapsed due to another flood.
José, his neighbor, arrived for the same reason with his pregnant wife. "Many people have left here, but this stopped on July 28 (2024) due to the elections. I imagine that at that moment other buttons began to move," he says, referring to the electoral fraud that unleashed a wave of sustained repression by the government.
In 2010 there were more than 100 families at the Posada de Catia and today there are 15 left, which has allowed them to take up more space and live a little more comfortably. “I don't know exactly when my turn will come, because you have to understand that this can't happen overnight and, thank God, I'm not under a bridge,” he says, without doing much else. "We are waiting. The only management I am going to do is when they tell me to look for my house."
Jessica is the main spokesperson for the Casa Taller shelter, also in Catia, where 21 families now stay. "Many left the country and they only gave housing to two, in the Valles del Tuy, but I intend to be given housing in Caracas, due to my husband's work and my daughter's illness, who has chronic parotitis and sialadenitis. In addition, it seems that I have lupus, so leaving someone committed to health to another state is not ideal."
The place has been without water for a month and, even so, the bathrooms are shared between 12 people. However, Jessica longs for the homes to be built within the shelter itself: "They have told us that they want to build a Self-Government Room here, so that the Cupaz can function. But we can all fit in here," she says.
In July, the Delcy Rodríguez government delivered 200 homes to victims of the double seismic event, just three weeks after the event. For this reason, refugees from buildings such as the Pomarrosa and the Casa Taller made their complaint through TikTok, but the response has only been the announcement of another census to the families and a warning: "It is reported that there are shelters and shelters with particularities where they have made videos and carry out contempt actions, which will not be accepted and will be activated under legal action."
Shelters and shelters in Caracas are places that many citizens do not know exist. They are all located in the Libertador Municipality—historically dominated by Chavismo—and most of these buildings have significant leaks and post-remote damage that have not been addressed.
Its inhabitants are not only afraid that they will not be given an answer, but that, if they demand it, they will be sent to live in worse conditions than they currently have. That is why there is a certain anesthesia in his words, which speak of hope even with the lost look of so much waiting. Jessica leaves it to faith: "We have to be patient and ask so that we benefit, because we do not have the resources to buy a home. We have to trust in God: the opportunity will come."
