Debate: Ministry of Environment, Habitat and Housing
Experts agree on the urgency of integrating habitat and sustainability policies to the housing challenge -they also warn us about the danger of bureaucratizing risks and of the challenge of conflicts of competences...
Maya Ivonne Quiroga Paneque, CUBAHORA
July, 2026
Housing in Cuba (Fernando Medina Fernández / Cubahora)
The recently proposed Law on the Organization of the Central State Administration, published on June 8 this year by the National Assembly of People’s Power, has sparked intense debate in Cuban academic and professional circles. The preliminary draft, which would reduce the number of 23 ministries and four national institutes to mainly, and only, 20 portfolios, provides for the creation of a new institution called: Ministry of Environment, Habitat and Housing.
The measure to apply is part of a process of “reordering, resizing and perfecting” the state apparatus so as to achieve “increased effectiveness in the administrative function.” The proposal has caused many reactions. Some specialists see the merger as an opportunity to integrate sustainable development and climate resilience policies to the housing challenge, while others warn about the risk that housing urgency will cause the subordination of ecological priorities, and even that critical functions of the missing CITMA could end up diluted.
The debate reflects structural challenges that are part of the Cuban institutional system in housing, urban planning and the environment.
A necessary ministry may not be sufficient
The new Ministry of Environment, Habitat and Housing would concentrate in a single body, the environmental functions that until now CITMA exercised — together with competences of the National Institute of Hydraulic Resources and of the National Institute of Territorial Planning and Urbanism (INOTU).
In his Facebook profile, Alejandro Palmarola, biologist and environmentalist, affirms the creation of the new Ministry “is a success and a necessity”. He argues in favor of the Ministry on the basis of the accumulated experience within CITMA, and he points out, that structures with overlapping functions have coexisted, for example the Directorate of Environment and the Environment Agency, and they have generated inefficiencies as well as gaps in responsibility.
Palmarola believes that a new Ministry with a transversal nature would permit to overcome fragmentations, while aligning with international trends favoring environmental management to be articulated with other strategic policies. He warns, however, that the challenge is working beyond the name of the Ministry to ensure the essential: avoid duplication and to ensure the body has operational coherence.
Institutional redesign must simplify structures and make public management more agile, particularly in a context, like Cuba, where bureaucracy has been identified as one of the main brakes for science, sustainability and innovation in the country.
Hiram J. Gonzalez Alonso, doctor of Biological Sciences, has declared to Juventud Técnica some doubts he has about the definition of “habitat” that appear in the mission of the new ministry. He said:
“Neither in the mission nor in the functions is habitat clearly defined," and he explains that "habitat must be conceived as the set of geographical characteristics in which biodiversity develops and coexists.” Instead, he argues, “the situation of the waters is prioritized and united to the territorial order. We have been working for many years in research on the environment and biodiversity and have been impacted because of this approach.”
Architecture, housing and the risk of superstructure
Universo García Lorenzo, architect and Master of Science at the Institute of Architecture and Constructions of Alma-Atá, Republic of Kazakhstan, argues that both, the Municipal and Provincial Directorates of Housing in Cuba, “have historically responded to a centralized approach to allocation, state control of the housing fund and bureaucratic processing.” The professor reveals that many of the technicians who work in the housing directions lack university training in architecture or civil engineering and that such training limits them, and cannot be replaced with short courses at medium technician level. He points that such limitations often "compromise the quality of assessments and inspections performed.”
García Lorenzo also points out to the constant overlap of functions between the Housing Directorate and the INOTU. “With the unification of functions under INOTU, boundaries between dictating a technical housing status and granting building licenses usually collide at the municipal base provoking bureaucratic ‘flegage’ where citizens are caught between "Housing regulations" and "Urban Planning opinions" that sometimes contradict each other.”
Faced with such scenario, Garcia Lorenzo favors the recovery of independent institutes for Architecture, Housing and the Environment, operating as an ecosystem of counterweights: “INOTU is necessary as the great arbiter of the territory and urbanism, but it can not continue to absorb such complex and specific disciplines.”
The risk of fusion: will the urgency of housing crush the environment?
Analyzing the merger from two sides, García Lorenzo points that “The advantage is that the merger would allow to rootly integrate policies of sustainable development and climate resilience –that are vital for Cuba in the face of hurricanes and coastal floods – as well as favor the use of low-carbon materials.”
But he warns about a risk: Housing in Cuba drags a crisis of housing deficit and critical deterioration requiring executive management of shock and massive construction resources. By merging with a regulatory and conservation entity such as the Environment, the operational urgency to build could clash with environmental protection restrictions, OR the urgency of housing could end up crushing ecological priorities if there are no autonomous control agencies.”
The Concept of Habitat and Historical Debt
One of the strongest contributions of the technical guild, collected by García Lorenzo, is the transition from an approach of “housing as a unit” to one of “integral habitat”. This last involves building houses, but also ensuring services, infrastructure, public spaces and urban quality.
This approach has been defended for decades in spaces such as the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, or the National Union of Architects and Engineers of the Construction of Cuba, where the need and value of prioritizing the rehabilitation of the existing housing fund should be above the new work. In their perspective the creation of a ministry could be an opportunity to institutionalize such vision, provided that the ministry is not reduced to merely administrative reorganization.
Towards a model of integral management of housing and habitat
The dean of the Faculty of Architecture of the Technological University of Havana "Jose Antonio Echeverria", himself Master in Social Housing, Dr. Ruslan Muñoz Hernández, places the debate in a broader context. He recalls that a concern for mass and public housing took hold in Latin America from the 1930s, and in Europe after 1945, that with the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the right to housing became a very relevant issue.
Muñoz Hernández advocates in favor of “solid, robust, efficient offices or departments that handle the issue of housing,” while he also insists that they must be integrated not only into technical disciplines but also into banking and legal issues. He proposes that officials have technical competences of architecture and engineering, and that agents of the Ministry of Labor or Social Security and representatives of a bank to process subsidies all become directly involved in the management.
“The properties must have administrators or managers who answer perhaps to the Municipality itself. There has to be a gear that allows a property management system to work.”
All specialists agree that the success of the new structure will depend not only on institutional design, but on the ability to articulate housing emergencies with the demands of environmental sustainability, and on ensuring that science and academia maintain the autonomy necessary to exercise their critical function.
Between integration and specialization
The debate is not limited to these three specialists. In different academic and professional spaces, a common concern has emerged: how to achieve a balance between institutional integration and technical specialization.
Some sectors welcome the creation of a ministry that unifies dispersed policies and facilitates coordination in the face of challenges such as climate change and the housing crisis. Others, fear that a “macrostructure” will end up diluting responsibilities and weakening technical control.
Deep down, the discussion reveals a structural dilemma: reforming without reproducing bureaucracies, integrating without losing specialization, and responding to social emergencies without compromising environmental sustainability.
What seems clear is that, beyond institutional design, the success of any reform will depend on its ability to solve concrete problems: the deterioration of the housing fund, administrative inefficiency and the lack of articulation between public policies.
