Cuba: Emigration, Empty Homes & the Threat of “Squatters”

By Amaury Valdivia

HAVANA TIMES – In the last four years, Cuba has likely lost 24% of its population, economist and demographer Carlos Albizu-Campos stated just a few days ago. According to his estimates, just over 8,025,624 people still live on the island.

Although that figure differs from the 9,748,532 that the authorities count as “effective residents” (those who spent more than half of the past year in the country), both statistics highlight the magnitude of the demographic crisis the Caribbean nation is experiencing. The 2012 census showed 11.2 million inhabitants.

Since 2022 alone, over 850,000 Cubans have left for the United States, according to updated data published at the end of 2024 by the US Customs and Border Protection Office. Another 300,000 Cubans are in the process of obtaining Spanish citizenship under the Democratic Memory Law, with the primary goal of emigrating to the European nation.

But unlike other countries, it’s not usually the poor who leave Cuba—it’s people with middle and high incomes. The possibility of emigrating is out of reach for large segments of the population. Even those working  in the private sector, which pays much higher wages than the state, however, most of these workers earn less than US $100 a month—barely enough to cover food expenses. The cost of a basic monthly food products ended 2024 at around US $35 per person (about 12,000 pesos on the informal currency market), as recently reported by the National Office of Statistics and Information.

Saving the $2,000 to $3,000 needed to start the emigration process—just airfare to Guyana or Nicaragua alone costs between $1,000 and $1,500 per person—is a significant challenge. Only those with help from relatives or friends abroad, or property to sell on the island, can manage it. Among the latter, homes were for a long time the most common resource. Many who emigrated before 2020 did so thanks to money earned from selling their own homes or inherited ones.

“At that time, the real estate market was very active, largely due to the interest of emigrants—especially Cuban Americans—in buying property in Cuba. Later, with the pandemic and the resulting crisis, that interest faded. Each of these trends affected prices, which peaked during the ‘thaw’ with the United States from 2014 to 2017. Now, in contrast, we’re seeing historic lows in prices, with far more sellers than buyers,” explained Manuel Sardiñas, a real estate agent based in the city of Camagüey.

A wide variety of two- and three-bedroom “capitalist-era” apartments—the most valued, built toward the end of the 1950s—can now be found in central areas of Havana for between $20,000 and $50,000, less than half of what they cost five or six years ago. Similar trends are occurring with independent houses, properties in provincial capitals, and rural properties.

As a result of this new reality, a growing number of people are emigrating without getting rid of their homes. Others, who have been living abroad for years, are inheriting and holding on to their family homes in Cuba, thanks to successive changes in the law in 2019 and 2023 that eliminated the requirement for permanent residency in order to own property on the island.

“Some clients have told me: I’m not getting rid of the house in case I’m ever forced to come back and need a place to stay. Others refuse to ‘give away’ their house by selling it at the low prices the market currently offers. One thing to watch is the possible repercussions of the US government’s threat to deport half a million Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans who entered via parole and have not yet regularized their immigration status,” the real estate agent observed.

One Building, Three Empty Apartments

Every morning, right after making coffee, Jose Manuel begins his first “round” of the day, which takes him less than ten minutes to check on the three apartments in his care. “It’s not that I expect to find a thief or anything like that—thank God this building is pretty secure—but you always have to make sure a window hasn’t been left open or that a power outage hasn’t damaged any surge protectors on the appliances,” he says.

In the building where he lives with his wife, only three of the six apartments are permanently occupied: his own, another couple also over 70 years old, and a young couple with their small child. The latter are in the process of obtaining Spanish citizenship and leaving the island, and recently asked Jose Manuel if he could take care of their home when the time comes. “Their relatives could only stop by occasionally, and they don’t want to rent it out for fear it might get damaged—or worse,” he said.

The “worse” his neighbors fear is losing their home if potential tenants refuse to leave. Although in March 2023 the Cuban government toughened penalties for illegal property occupation—making it a criminal offense when it wasn’t before—it’s still very difficult to evict someone who refuses to leave a house, even if they broke in. The process becomes even more complicated if the illegal occupants include children or pregnant women.

In some provinces in western Cuba—the region with the highest proportion of emigration—the problem has grown slowly but steadily. Margarita Martínez, a resident of Santa Clara (about 250 kilometers east of Havana), told her local newspaper that she was only able to reclaim her emigrant daughter’s house after some relatives persuaded two young women who had moved in with their children to leave by paying them. “The legal process to get them out was very slow, and in the meantime they were destroying the house. When we got it back, we had to fix the bathroom, replace the front door… a ton of things.”

More recently, the provincial newspaper of Matanzas (100 kilometers east of Havana) reported that in that city and the nearby towns of Varadero and Cárdenas, many people now work full-time taking care of homes belonging to emigrants and foreigners. Fees range from 5,000–7,000 pesos (14-20 USD) per month to several tens of thousands of pesos or the equivalent in dollars, explained a young man from Cárdenas who watches over a Cuban American’s property. “It all depends on the features of the house and whether you stay there full time,” he explained in a messaging chat.

Mirielis Morales Rondon, a judge from the Matanzas provincial court, acknowledged in an interview for the same report that the process for dealing with the crimes of usurpation, illegal occupation, and unlawful possession of properties can be burdensome. The protocol requires that in such situations one must first pursue administrative or civil avenues, and only after exhausting those can a criminal complaint proceed. The best recommendation is to leave a relative or acquaintance in charge of the property as a preventative measure, she advised.

Jose Manuel, for his part, said he doesn’t charge anything for his services. “I do it because these apartments belong to lifelong neighbors, or to their children who inherited them. Even if they only come once or twice a year, they shouldn’t lose what’s theirs,” he reflected. Our conversation was interrupted by a call from a neighbor living in Canada, letting him know that her “little package” had arrived in Camagüey and would be delivered that afternoon. “She owns apartment 2B. She sends us some medicine and other little things. It’s just something they do for us, even though we keep telling them it’s not necessary,” he said before going upstairs to share the good news with his wife.

Read more from Cuba here on Havana Times.