Why does the D.R. government have to build even one home let alone 100 thousand?

@anthonyC,

I had the same question when I read that. I can see it if this was a Socialist state. But I think our confusion has more to do with translation & absence of detail than anything else. By that, I mean every government, (Federal down through municipal), has some department dealing with 'economic development'. Perhaps what this article is missing is that these homes are 'planned' to be built by contract bid as a result of other economic growth motivators such as the cold storage facility that's going to be built.

As in the old Romanic style during the conquest, a fort would be built, and small villages would spring up immediately around it. This still happens with great regularity today. A large facility opens up, then the residential & micro economy follows.

I don't know any of this to be th case, but, do you think that this makes some sense? Its not the government doing the building, but rather the planning and issuing of contracts as a normal course?

Gee, why should I help any of my extended family to buy or build a home when if they just sit back and eat rice and beans and moan about no house and no job the government will in some manner tax the #$%^& out of me, businesses and visitors and build them a home. I can understand how an expat should not expect a hand out. Do Dominicans going to USA and other countries have equal understandings? I have the personal philosphy that if you start 'paying' some one for nothing you will soon have a lot of nothing. One observant reader in one of these posts mentioned he had never seen a Chinese beggar. Nor (in extensive world travels) have I, just had a long conversation with a DR man here on vacation from working in China and asked him - he also has not seen beggars in a city of 20 million people. Maybe some personel responsibility on the part of youth will play out into old age, 'the child is the father of the man'.