Cuba Wants to Help Its People Have Sex

State-run 'love motels' to return to Havana amid lack of privacy driven by housing crisis
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 4, 2017 8:53 AM CDT
Updated Jul 8, 2017 10:47 AM CDT
Cuba Wants to Help Its People Have Sex
A couple kisses in Artemisa, Cuba.   (AP Photo/Javier Galeano)

Cuba wants to help its citizens have sex … in private. As the BBC reports, it's not unusual to see couples getting intimate in Havana's public areas, like parks and beaches, because they don't have the privacy to do so at home. The nation's housing crunch means that multiple families often have to share the same apartment and divorced couples sometimes must continue living together, reports Reuters. While private facilities do offer rooms for rent by the hour, at a fee of $5 for three hours, that's not in the budget for many in a nation with an average monthly salary that's less than $30. To help, Cuba says it will bring back state-run "posadas" or "love motels," which were common some three decades ago.

The state will start by opening a 16-room motel in Havana, named Hotel Vento, before converting another hotel, a rep for the Provincial Housing Company of Havana tells trade union weekly Trabajadores. "To think about how to diversify options for love is not farfetched," per Trabajadores. "It is a reality that concerns everyone, and cannot become a luxury." Some of the dozens of posadas in use in the city until the 1990s, when hurricanes necessitated that they be converted into housing for the homeless, will also be restored. Havana's La Monumental will reportedly be among them. "We want to revive this service that is in high demand, has a big social impact and without a doubt is very profitable," the housing rep says. Adds a hotel administrator, "The city needs this." (Havana now has a luxury mall.)

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