Herald Staff Report

 Cuba's crippling housing crisis pushed Lirka Guillermo to the high seas.

 A house or even a shabby apartment could have saved her life. But that's a
 commodity too precious to offer in Cuba, where hundreds of thousands are living
 in dilapidated homes and tens of thousands more are in shelters.

 ``Look at how desperate she was,'' said her grandmother Rosa Betancourt. ``She
 was writing letters directly to Raul Castro!''

 Guillermo was just 18 when her mother hopped on a raft to leave Cuba during the
 1994 rafter crisis.

 After Silvia Lluis' departure, the government reclaimed Lluis' home, forcing her
 teenage daughter out.

 ``I think my situation should have an immediate solution: Return my house or give
 me another, because it is true that I cannot pay for my mother's mistakes,'' she
 wrote in a 1997 letter to President Fidel Castro's brother Raul.

 ``My mother left her country, I stayed, and so I should pay? What message is
 there in that?''

 She got a terse reply. Her old home was being used by doctors; she should room
 with relatives until something comes up. After a five-year letter-writing campaign,
 Guillermo joined 12 friends on an overloaded boat headed for Miami.

 They left the country's north shore on Nov. 22. Three survivors, including
 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez, were found Nov. 25, and Guillermo was not one of
 them. Her body was later recovered. ``For a house,'' Betancourt said. ``My
 granddaughter died for a house.''

 In a country with such a housing shortage that the government acknowledges
 Havana alone has some 9,000 people living in shelters and 100,000 living in
 unsafe structures, Guillermo's request would likely take decades.

 LOW-PRIORITY PERSON

 A single woman with no children is low on the priority list for housing, where the
 government regulates real estate on the basis of need, employee seniority and
 political reliability.

 Thousands of families are living in squalor, tripled up in homes, sharing bathrooms
 with strangers, and spending years waiting for the government to find them a new
 place to live.

 The Keror family will not bother with government waiting lists or shelters: They
 have a plan.

 Niurka and Jorge divorced this year, so Jorge could be free to marry a Norwegian
 tourist. Their tactic is to get the unsuspecting Norwegian to send Jorge enough
 cash so he can find an apartment on the black market.

 While most homes in Cuba are privately owned, real estate sales are so tightly
 restricted that most sales and exchanges in fact require some illegal
 arrangements, from under-the-table payments to fraudulent residency documents.

 Once the Kerors have a home of their own, the duped tourist will be dumped.

 ``It gets me angry, it gets me everything,'' Niurka Keror said. ``But I need an
 apartment. Sometimes I feel bad for the lady. But what am I going to do? She
 lives better than I do.''

 13 PEOPLE, 3 BEDROOMS

 Keror shares a three-bedroom apartment in Havana's historic district with her
 husband, two children, mother, stepfather, two brothers, a sister-in-law, niece,
 sister and two grown nephews. She, her husband and their two children share one
 bedroom. The 6-year-old shares their bed, the 10-year-old squeezes into a crib.

 ``It's a little tight,'' she said with a smile. ``My mother is a pest, so sometimes the
 situation here drives me crazy. I spend the day on the street just to avoid coming
 home.''

 Cuba's government says housing construction has kept up with population
 growth, but Havana's needs are increased by illegal migration to the capital.

 To tackle the crisis, Cuba began 20 years ago forming teams of volunteers who
 work building apartment buildings in the hopes of getting first chance at a unit.
 The workers sometimes toil for up to a dozen years before they are allotted a
 home.

 Housing is one of Cuba's big problems, said Yoel Sanchez, a housing project
 construction manager. ``You can wait for one year or five, it's all for your need and
 society's need. It's not so fast, but I live in a very new building built by the
 revolution. Before the revolution, my parents lived in a house made of cardboard.''

 A report this summer by Havana municipal authorities said nearly half of the
 capital's 560,000 units are in moderate to bad condition. Some 60,000 are slated
 for demolition, 75,000 are propped up with braces, and 4,000 are in danger of
 collapse.

 SQUATTER LIVING

 One of those buildings houses a hotel worker and his wife, who live like squatters
 in a dilapidated, centuries-old building on Calle San Ignacio that was once used to
 store horse-drawn carriages.

 For the decade the couple has lived there, the building has been slated for repair.
 But the hotel worker is embarrassed to complain: He feels privileged, he says,
 because he shares the one-room apartment only with his wife; they have running
 water and a door that closes.

 ``They've been telling us for years that we are on the list for renovations,'' said the
 man, who feared having his name published. ``We can't live like this any more.
 But write down the address -- No. 202 -- so the government here knows we are
 waiting.''

 ``For a miracle,'' chuckled a neighbor, Valeriano Gonzalez.

 Gonzalez proudly proclaims ``Invention!'' at the various things resourceful
 residents built themselves: the staircase, the toilets, a wall. His wife, Zulema
 Basulto Alberto, says it's not all so bad.

 ``It's true people have been waiting 20, 30 years to leave here,'' said Basulto, who
 lives with two daughters and two teenage grandchildren. ``But I feel good here.
 Why tell a lie. I have water, light and gas. I could be in a modern house, but
 maybe I would only have light twice a week.''

 Herald staff writer Juan Tamayo contributed to this report.

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald