FLORIDA, Cuba -- The wooden one-room shack where Humberto Díaz lived in central Cuba is technically still standing, but the planks that made up its roof snapped into multiple pieces when Hurricane Ike sent a palm tree crashing through.

He spent a recent afternoon scrounging materials off the floor to use in rebuilding, and hopes to buy shingles at about $4 apiece. Díaz doubts the Cuban government help will come in time: Too many people are waiting.

''The last time a storm damaged my house, it took the state four months to get me materials,'' he said, covered in wood chips as he chopped the remains of the palm that claimed his house. ``We'll have to rebuild it ourselves.''

Díaz counts himself among the more than two million people on this island whose roofs were smashed or their entire homes toppled with the passage of two devastating hurricanes. By the Cuban government's count, some 440,000 homes were damaged during hurricanes Gustav in August and Ike eight days later, in September. An estimated 63,000 of them were destroyed.

Cuba, already reeling from a serious housing shortage, has nearly doubled its deficit in homes, while the tab to replace them mounts in the billions. With scarce resources and coast-to-coast wreckage, the country is faced with the daunting task of housing storm victims while simultaneously trying to rebuild its agricultural industry and thousands of government buildings.

Food shortages have begun to plague the capital, and the government will probably be forced to spend money first on groceries. The government estimates that it needs $5 billion to rebuild.

''We take a few steps forward, and a few steps back,'' said Kike, one of Díaz's neighbors.

TOO MUCH LOST

Experts say the task is so overwhelming that Cuba is unlikely ever to accomplish it. Too many structures were lost in a country that already had thousands of people living in temporary and substandard shelter. People simply have to make do.

Díaz, whose house in Camagüey province was bigger before he lost the back half to a different storm, is staying with friends.

The Tejada family, who lived outside Floro Pérez in the northeastern province of Holguín, have been sleeping at a school each night. When morning comes, they roll up their belongings so children can attend class while the storm refugees go home and rebuild.

Rosa Arrencibia, 47, said 42 people crammed into her sister's three-room house in Camagüey.

José Armando Valdez is 81 and hitches a ride every day between his house in Santa Lucía in Camagüey to his son's in Guardalavaca in Holguín to sleep.

''At least I have half of my roof,'' Valdez said. ``I can stay under the half that's there for now. The people who lost their whole roofs should be helped first.''

Even before the storm, the Cuban government press said the national housing deficit was 600,000 units, up from 530,000 five years ago. The government boasted of building 110,000 houses last year, then acknowledged that they had not even come close.

''Nothing justifies fraud or trickery like was produced last year when a number of houses were reported as finished, and they weren't,'' Vice President Carlos Lage said last year.

The National Housing Institute adjusted its goal to 50,000 new homes a year. At that rate, it would take at least 20 years to build all the homes Cuba needs.

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