The drama of those who live in vulnerable housing

One of the main causes of social indifference is ignorance of the real social problems that exist in our communities. We tend to assume that the common is what is everyday and we rarely stop to think that not everyone is fortunate enough to have the comforts to which we are accustomed. Arriving at our home and turning on the light, opening the tap, turning on the stove to cook or getting ready to sleep in a conditioned room, is for many of us something normal and ordinary. However, there are thousands of families who subsist in extraordinary conditions where they do not have such basic services as piped water, drainage, safe roof or firm floor. This situation is experienced every day by thousands of adults and minors who, due to their conditions of poverty, are forced to live in vulnerable homes where basic services are a luxury and physical integrity a desire under permanent risk. In all cities there are irregular settlements to which over time society ceases to see them and the authorities to attend to them. When there is an irregular settlement or an invasion in a geographical sector of risk or outside the urbanization, the material deficiencies also translate into an exclusion that prevents them from social recognition, since by not having an official authorization or recognition, they are prevented from accessing the basic services and human rights that the Constitution enshrines for all without any distinction. Today, UN-Habitat estimates that one billion people in the world live in these types of settlements or neighborhoods, now known by their English term as slums. And the worst thing is that this world body warns that, in case of not carrying out adequate urbanization plans, one in four people will live in these informal housing settlements in the next decade. The so-called slums, whose name comes from the irregular settlements originally scattered in India, are the same ones that, as in the whole world, are installed in remote lands, wastelands or in risk areas that do not have any type of basic service, such as access to water, electricity, health services and garbage collection, factors that turn these areas into foci of multiple diseases due to the lack of hygiene, being, as always, minors the most affected. In our country, according to figures from the National Institute of Sustainable Soil (formerly Corett), there are almost 8 million irregular properties, with an increase of 90 thousand lots per year. This situation results in more than 29 million people currently living in these conditions of vulnerability, representing a vicious circle fuelled by unemployment, informality, marginalization, insecurity and illiteracy. Right here, in our capital city of Sinaloa, as expressed by the head of the Municipal Housing Institute (Implan), the prestigious Arq. Alberto Medrano Conteras, there are about 30% of homes that fall into this category of vulnerability. Something that lays bare the inequality to which we seem to have become accustomed, and where it is even possible to appreciate it in such a crude way with the growing existence of private subdivisions that are adjacent to cardboard and sheet houses. This problem of irregular settlements with vulnerable housing, is one of the most pressing tasks that must be addressed by the state and municipal development plans of the new authorities that today direct the destinies of our entity, because we are not only talking about risks caused by floods, landslides or natural phenomena, but also about that social segregation suffered by these people due to the lack of public services and the lack of access to opportunities for education and development. Faced with this phenomenon that grows without control or urban planning in all cities, we can not continue head-on and without turning to see them, we must participate with governments to propose and demand that it be attended, because in addition to the humanitarian part that should sensitize us, there is also the impact that their due attention represents in terms of health, public education and safety. THE QUIXOTIC FOOLISHNESS OF ESTRADA FERREIRO. – Despite the excessive considerations that the governor of the state, Dr. Rubén Rocha Moya, has had towards the mayor of the Sinaloan capital, Jesús Estrada Ferreiro, it seems that far from making him come to his senses, they have served to embolden him and continue in his loquacious persecution against all those imaginary enemies who want to sabotage his administration. The conflicts in which the municipal president of Culiacán has been involved are already well known, at the same time.It is the impulsive, thoughtless and quarrelsome character that he demonstrated in his first triennium and that, as a tragic sequel, seems to be the constant again in his second term. For the governor himself, this behavior of the mayor has been a real headache since they were campaigning. Hence, the excess of political courtesy to which the state president arrived when he said that he would vote again for Estrada, managed to bring many a smile, considering that there are currently citizens organizing to ask for the removal of the mayor through an impeachment. For his part, and confident that it is very unlikely that such an impeachment will happen, the new mayor culichi has chosen in counterpart to take advantage of the uproar in the media, trying to victimize himself and vilifying all those who criticize his performance … does this story sound familiar?



Original source in Spanish