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Abstract
This article explores the potential of housing policies to reduce economic, social and political inequalities. Understanding inequalities as issues of distribution and recognition, housing policies have the potential to tackle them by encouraging more equal outcomes and processes. Presupposing the centrality of the urban dimension in current debates, this article puts forward the idea of housing as urbanism as a framework of analysis. This framework is used to discuss the Chilean case, a market-led housing system that is considered as a financial model by many countries in the global South. However, urban shortcomings have encouraged policy makers to incorporate explicit urban equality ambitions in recent years. Based on empirical work conducted in Bajos de Mena, Santiago, the article presents two programmes with equality aspirations, examining their economic, social and political impacts. To draw lessons from the cases contributing to wider debates, it identifies the main challenges in addressing inequality, reflecting on the relevance of these conclusions beyond the Chilean case.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Jorge Fiori and Camillo Boano for their supervision during this research; reviewers of Housing Studies for their valuable comments; the people who contributed to this study in Santiago from different public institutions and especially the residents of BdM, who opened the door of their houses and allowed to understand a portion of their lives, families and struggles; and through them, to grasp some of the layers of the complexities of housing in the city of Santiago.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributor
Camila Cociña is a Research Fellow at The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College London, where she works as part of the “Knowledge in Action for Urban Equality (KNOW)” programme. She holds a PhD in Development Planning from UCL.
Notes
1 BdM is located 20 km away from the centre of Santiago, and many residents—particularly women—spend their lives practically without leaving the perimeter of BdM. By the time of this research, there was neither a police station nor a fire station, and there are just basic facilities such as local medical centres, schools, sports facilities, churches, some community centres and minor grocery shops. In 2013, a park was built in the sector of La Cañamera, covering an old landfill site.
2 Dirigentes is the name given to official community leaders. Dirigenta(s) is the female form of the word Dirigente(s).
3 UF (Unidad de Fomento) is a Unit of account used in Chile; most subsidies and housing prices are indicated in this unit. It is constantly adjusted for inflation. Its value by September 2017 is CL$26,610, approximately £32. In September 2017, 380 UF = £12,349 and 950 UF = £30,872
4 The four areas of the pilot implementation of the Second Opportunity programme are: the neighbourhoods Nuevo Horizonte II and Brisas del Mar, in the city of Viña del Mar; the neighbourhood Vicuña Mackenna, in the city of Rancagua; the neighbourhood Parinacota, in the district of Quilicura in Santiago and the neighbourhoods Francisco Coloane and Cerro Morado, in the district of Puente Alto also in Santiago.
5 In September 2017, 700 UF = £22,748. The owners can decide to give up the subsidy and get the amount of the expropriation in cash if they want to buy a property outside the SERVIU (Service of Housing and Urbanism of the Ministry of Housing) system, and they are forced to receive just the expropriation amount without the extra subsidy if they own a second property somewhere else.
6 In September 2017, 46 UF = £1,495.
7 The only legal instrument of the programme is a five-pages document (MINVU, Citation2013) that allows families to access public subsidies for a second time during their lives under certain conditions. Therefore, it needs to use instruments from the existing policy tools, namely, the expropriation law that has existed since 1978, and the housing subsidies provided by the DS49, the standard programme for the provision of vouchers for purchasing social housing.
8 In September 2017, 700 UF = £22,748. The rest of the beneficiaries only received an expropriation amount, with values between 403.62 UF and 624.25 UF. In September 2017, 403.62 UF = £13,116, and 624.25 UF = £20,286.
9 In September 2017, 227 UF = £7,377.
10 In September 2017, $CL$8M = £9,769.
11 This does not consider networks of production and trade of illegal drugs, which play an important role in the economy in some networks within BdM, but the volume of which is hard to estimate.
12 Exceptionally, some cases would accept 85% of adherence, being a ‘conditioned application’ (MINVU, Citation2013).