Cuba's housing crisis will be made worse by Hurricane Dennis, which destroyed tens of thousands of homes.

BY PABLO BACHELET AND FRANCES ROBLES

Hurricane Dennis' crushing 12-hour stay in Cuba wreaked havoc on the nation's already precarious housing shortage, wiping out tens of thousands of much-needed homes, the island news media reported Monday.

The U.S. State Department said meanwhile that the Cuban government had rejected a U.S. offer Sunday to send in humanitarian relief and an ''assessment team'' to ``independently help determine what relief supplies were most needed.''

Department spokesman Tom Casey added that the U.S. government would nevertheless work through ''appropriate nongovernmental organizations'' to deliver relief provisions ''quickly and directly to the Cuban people'' and urged U.S. residents to follow suit.

A State Department official who requested anonymity in compliance with department regulations said the Bush administration was not considering easing U.S. sanctions on Cuba in order to expedite the delivery of aid.

''It wouldn't be an effective means of helping Cuba,'' the official said.

According to official Cuban government estimates, some 1,800 homes were damaged in Havana alone. In Santiago de Cuba to the east, 5,241 homes were reported damaged -- 659 of those completely wrecked.

And it was even worse around the rest of the island.

Cuba's Communist Party newspaper, Granma, reported that 25,000 homes were partially or totally destroyed in all. And the paper acknowledged that the figure did not include the hard-hit towns of Guamá and Tercer Frente, where communication problems, swollen rivers and blocked roads have kept officials from getting a damage report.

Some media reports put Dennis' damage this weekend even higher. Citing ''preliminary press reports,'' the Agency France Press said Monday that nearly 80,000 homes were damaged: 34,000 in Granma; 26,000 in Cienfuegos; 4,000 in Santiago de Cuba; 8,200 in Sancti Spíritus; 3,200 in Matanzas; and 1,800 in Havana.

Whatever the total damage, it was certain to worsen a decades-old housing shortage, one that experts said was unlikely to be remedied with short-term storm cleanup efforts.

A recent Cuban government Housing Institute report estimated that some 500,000 new homes are needed in the nation of 11 million people. The government vowed this month to double its pace of housing construction next year to 30,000 new homes annually, although the report said it needs to build 50,000 houses a year for the next decade.

And almost every hurricane that hits the island increases the housing shortage by crushing already crumbling and overcrowded homes.

In 2001 alone, the report said, 38,000 families were left homeless by bad weather. Hurricane Lili in 2002 affected 76,000 homes, ruining 15,000.