Caracas takes golf courses for housing

AP on Yahoo ^ | 8/29/06 | Fabiola Sanchez - ap

[NormsRevenge]

CARACAS, Venezuela - Three major Caracas golf courses, long favored by the city's wealthy, are being expropriated to build housing for thousands of poor and middle class Venezuelans, officials said Tuesday.

The city expropriations, which will likely generate new friction between supporters and opponents of President Hugo Chavez, are part of an ambitious government effort to provide more homes amid an acute housing shortage that has driven up real estate prices.

Mayor Juan Barreto's office has ordered the "forced acquisition" of two golf courses and will soon issue another decree expropriating a third course in the ritzy hills of southern Caracas, city attorney Juan Manuel Vadell told The Associated Press.

Vadell said the golf courses' owners have 30 days to appear before the mayor's office, starting a negotiation period in which a commission will eventually decide on fair compensation for the courses.

Barreto told state television as many as 50,000 homes would be built on 363 acres spanning the three golf courses.

The expropriations broaden a campaign by Barreto and other Chavez allies to acquire land for public housing projects.

Barreto has said that new courses could be located in the suburbs. He also said the courses are unjustifiably lavish expenses in a country where an estimated 1.6 million families lack decent housing.

Critics, including residents living in the few upscale homes located within the golf course lands, claim that property rights are being eroded under Chavez.

"This isn't an expropriation aimed at collective benefit," said Oscar Garcia Mendoza, a banker who lives at Caracas Country Club. "It's a violation of private property rights."

Chavez, a critic of capitalism and an ally of Cuban President Fidel Castro, says land and housing reforms are important, but he has insisted he also will respect private property rights.

One of the courses affected, the Caracas Country Club, was founded in 1918 and has long been a gathering place for Venezuela's elite. The course existed long before urban sprawl filled up much of the mountain-fringed valley.

[Bangupjob]

The course existed long before urban sprawl filled up much of the mountain-fringed valley. What a ridiculous statement! That so-called urban sprawl was unchecked illegal immigration, from Colombia and the Caribbean. That's what happens when you quit policing your borders and let anyone in. They set up shantytowns, encircle your city, elect communists and come after your golf courses. It's really pretty sick, but it's really what happened in Caracas.

[Rome2000]

A 4 cent bullet sould solve all of this in a minute.

[VeniVidiVici]

50,000 homes would be built on 363 acres spanning the three golf courses.

50,000 homes on 363 acres? Sounds like just enough so everyone gets to live in their own outhouse.

[Rb ver. 2.0]

20 years ago we would have supplied rebels with arms to fight this kind of totalitarianism.

I guess we've got too many irons in the fire to deal with this now.

[Chode]

i suppose building the houses where the NEW golf courses could be built is out of the question...

[Bangupjob]

The reason they want to pack them in so tight is that they want to change the voter composition of the little city it's in - it's an opposition neighborhood and they want to change it into a drug-addled, crime-infested chavista one, the better to chase the good people out and leave only angry criminals and corrupt communists behind. It is the sickest thing I have ever seen.

Someone needs to fight this, it's absolutely criminal.

[Hilltop]

Grant me the indulgence my friend.

It would be quite a delicious irony if a bogey golfer in Caracas were to take an iron on a par three, strike a balata ball, hit Hugo in the head and make a hole in one.

I think I'll rest now with that sugar plum vision still resident in my mind.

I bid you and yours all the best.

Hilltop.

[tflabo]

"20 years ago we would have supplied rebels with arms to fight this kind of totalitarianism."

Nothing a well-placed cruise missile couldn't handle.
Chavez is a wild hog let out of the pen and needs to meet the BBQ grill..

[July 4th]

Long term, probably not good for Chavez. I'm sure there were plenty of elites who were members of these clubs who acquiesced in his rule as long as they were protected. Now, he's pissed them off.

[Bogtrotter52]

Read DU. The DUmmies think this is a GREAT idea

[LFOD]

Let's see how this works out:
50K "homes"/363 ac. = 137.741 "homes"/ac.
43,560 sf.(one acre)/137.741 = 316.25 sf. per "home"
About the size of a modest living room not including walkways, setbacks, access, yards (hah!), fencing, roadways, streets, right of ways, utilities etc.

Of course they will stack them to make them more accommodating. I presume their version of public housing is not too different from ours.

[Bangupjob]

They're gonna look like stalinist housing projects, bleak, gray, tall, mass-produced, rain-stained and ugly, the vile kind endemic to all communist regimes.

Meanwhile, Miguel at Devil's Excrement and Daniel at Venezuela News have some informed new commentary about this expropriation here:

http://blogs.salon.com/0001330/2006/08/29.html#a3021

and

http://daniel-venezuela.blogspot.com/2006/08/golf-course-wars.html

[Kitten Festival]

I hope they don't get their grubby hands on this.