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“How could (this policy) have been improved? With what I have always said, information” (Leslie Dayanna Rojas Romero, 2023)

By Barbara Bonelli, on 20 June 2023

Image 1: Leslie and her neighbours Mirta, Sonia and Ana with their houses below the highway. Source: provided by the interviewee (date unknown).

 

I first met Leslie when I took the Ombudsperson’s office’s seat in the Barrio Padre Mugica’s (BPM) Council for Participatory Management for the Redevelopment Process (CPMRP). Leslie and her neighbours were furious. I wanted to understand why, fundamental changes occurred since BPM’s urban and social integration Law was passed. All residents would access a formalised housing solution with legal tenure, houses would be upgraded, and public services would be delivered onsite with a decision-making CPMRP. These women that were meeting after meeting shouting and crying to be left in their homes had had no information and were never part of the decision that established that, since they lived below the highway, they had to move from their houses to new homes close by, as the Law established. The government has been delivering a policy focused on distribution but needs more regard for the justice of decision-making power and procedures (Young, 1990). I learnt that lesson from Leslie, Sonia, Angela and Mirta, who showed me through their fight for their homes that “just organisation of government institutions and just methods of political decision making” (Young, 1990, p.12) need to be raised in order to achieve social justice.

 

Hoping for a better future

The city of Buenos Aires (CBA) is the heart of a large metropolis five times its population size. The impossibility of accessing formal housing in a country with a dolarised formal market struggling with recurrent economic crises, inflation and no offers to consolidate social housing has led the most vulnerable population to live in informal settlements. Around 7.5% of the inhabitants of the CBA live in slums (DGEyC, 2021). This is the story of one of them, Leslie Rojas, a migrant from Cochabamba, Bolivia, that came to Argentina at age 9 in 1991. Her parents came chasing the dream of a home of their own “They said that in Argentina, your salary was in US dollars. The majority of people who came here saved enough money to go back to Bolivia and buy a house”.

After the hyperinflation crisis, the economy was on the verge of collapse, so the tales of neoliberalism penetrated Argentina deeply. Under Menem’s government, profound changes in the country’s economic organisation were made, which included trade liberalisation, privatisation of public services and the Convertibility Law. This measure established a fixed parity of the Argentine peso to the US dollar. Argentina was soon able to stabilise its economy. However, neoliberalism soon hit the country’s economy: opening markets made Argentina’s emerging industry unable to compete in a liberalised global market with products in USD currency. The economy collapsed, leading to increasing unemployment. This occurs along the implementation of structural adjustment programmes (Davis, 2004), which reduced social policies and welfare (Hirst, 1996). In terms of urban governance, the participation of private actors in the development of real estate operations that encouraged speculation, intensified the commercialisation of urban land, pushed up land prices, and, with this, significantly increased informality” (Gelder, Cravino and Ostuni, 2013, p.128).

In 2000, due to a critical economic situation, Lesli’s parents could not continue to send money to their children in Bolivia. Hence, she and her siblings came and started living in a rented space in Villa Crespo. “They decided to stay because they hoped the country could improve and regain stability”. Unfortunately, that was not the case. The economic situation worsened, leading to one of the most challenging economic and political crises of Argentina’s democratic history in 2001, when poverty reached 66% in 2002 (CEDLAS, 2022). In 2004, after the death of their landlady, with an economic situation that made it impossible to buy a house in the formal dolarised market, the Roja family experienced the difficulties of finding a new place to rent without a property warranty “We did not know anyone who had a formal deed”. They did not have many choices and moved to BPM, one of the largest informal settlements of the CBA, “we had family living there, and my parents learnt about a house that was on sale”. They bought a half-built house in the informal market and started living there incrementally upgrading it.

 

The fight for a house of her own

Leslie wanted to become independent when she finished school, and she learned about squatted land under the highway. With a clear opportunity to rent there “a very precarious house: with brick walls and sheet metal roof”, she found a job and moved in 2008. In 2015 her husband and Leslie managed to buy that house and started incrementally upgrading it, with many material expenses. She put countless hours of sweat equity into that house “I could have enjoyed life, but I deprived myself of many things because I was making an effort to live better. I invested in my house below the highway”.

 

Image 2: Leslie´s house below the highway with friends and family. Source: provided by the interviewee (date unknown).

People living in informal settlements in the CBA have been steadily increasing since the return of democracy after slum eradication during the last dictatorship. The state had recognised the right to housing through various laws but did not deliver. This gave rise to a process of judicialisation of the policy (Delamata, 2016) as a strategy to achieve housing. As a result of a long process of mobilisation that included judicial appeals, in 2009, dwellers of BPM managed to pass Law 3343[1], which established general guidelines for the redevelopment but did not include precise urban planning and regulatory instruments (ACIJ, 2021). However, many dwellers like Leslie had no idea about it “I did not know anything about the Law or our rights. I knew that if you squatted or bought a squatted place, and a formalisation process occurred, you would need to pay for the land, but your house and everything you had invested in it was your own”.

With the arrival of Rodríguez Larreta to the government of the CBA, different socio-urban integration processes were initiated, with a substantial increase in the housing budget. The scheme adopted from 2016 onwards was “a model of territorial intervention that simultaneously comprises physical transformation, social intervention, institutional management and community participation; seeking to promote territorial equity, privileging state action in the peripheral areas of the city, with lower indices of human development and quality of life” (Quinchía Roldán, 2012, p.8). However, in the case of BMP, Lesli witnessed the complex participatory process.

In 2016 the re-urbanisation process began with a census: “I remember there was a census, and I told my husband that he should not tell them anything because I thought it was better. The census was held without information of what it would entail”. Mistrust and misinformation about government action are recurrent in Leslie’s narrative. Even though this policy was aiming at economic redistribution (the what), it did not include recognition of different members of the community (the who) and framing the project in a way in which all members participate as peers in social life (the how) (Fraser, 2009). To achieve social justice, “institutionalised obstacles that prevent some people from participating on a par with others, as full partners in social interaction” (Fraser, 2009, p.13) need to be dismantled. According to Leslie, this did not happen in BPM, leading to severe opposition from dwellers.

Two years later, Law 6.129[2] was passed, establishing housing improvements, new housing construction, provision of infrastructure and tenure regularisation (ACIJ, 2021) in BMP. It also created the CPMRP and determined that all those enlisted in the census had the right to tenure formalisation. Also, relocations would exist due to project needs (opening roads or public spaces) and environmental and building risk areas. However, they would be carried out as a last resort and with the beneficiaries’ consent. Relocations would be within the neighbourhood (in grey in the picture below), and new homes resulting from them would be built in the areas in light blue. The Law also said that the government must guarantee the availability of units of equal or superior characteristics concerning the original dwelling before moving and vacating the property.

 

Image 3: Places where the new houses would be constructed. Source: Bill presentation in the local Legislature

At this point, Leslie found out that the process directly affected her house since regulations in the CBA forbid housing below the highway. “Many things had been going on behind my back, meetings had been going on for years, and I knew nothing about them. They were not going to recognise all the materials I had in my house, and I would have to move to the new houses that, for me at that point, were going to be made of sheet metal and cardboard. All my effort, work and sacrifice would be lost. I was angry and wanted to fight for my house”.

Even though she had never been involved in community mobilisation, she started attending CPMRP meetings, going door to door, sharing information and inviting her neighbours to get involved. An insurgent movement emerged; they did not “constrain themselves to the spaces for citizen participation sanctioned by the authorities (invited spaces); they invent new spaces or re-appropriate old ones where they can invoke their citizenship rights to further their counter-hegemonic interests” (Sandercock, 1998).

Image 4: Leslie speaking in a community meeting. Source: provided by the interviewee (date unknown).

 

Once I developed a relationship with her, I got to know her house, built with much effort. That was when I fully understood her claims and, in different ways, why she did not want to move. Her house was affordable, adequate, accessible and viable; she already had a just housing solution (Bhan and Harish, 2021). A policy based on regulatory frameworks irrelevant to her needs (Payne and Majale, 2004) demanded that she move because the Law states that it is forbidden to leave below the highway. She was not part of that decision and did not understand it. “I still maintain that even though the highway was a highway, it protected us”.

We started working together once the resettlement process began when it was easy to see how a very comprehensive but top-down policy can have severe implementation problems when not acknowledging realities and voices on the ground. The authoritative disciplinary dominant forms of knowledge that shaped the project needed to be challenged to deliver a consciously collective policy that could address dwellers’ real needs (Bhan, 2019), not those established by the state. This policy falls under the “power of representation dilemma” (Uitermark and Nicholls, 2017). A planner with a privileged position to marginalised communities promotes a specific view of social justice under the risk of making assumptions that sideline specific segments of the urban poor.

Moreover, the government used a steel frame system of construction, unknown by dwellers of BPM, many of whom work in construction. “Nobody understood why we were not getting brick walls. We did not know anything about that system of construction; we had doubts, and they never explained what this system was about. We were afraid, and this was going to be our home. We thought they wanted us to move to houses that would last 30 years, and once we finished paying the mortgage, they would fall apart.” Again, a sense of mistrust, of not getting enough information, of not being part of the decisions that directly involved them emerge. Leslie, like her neighbours, had been directly involved in the incremental construction of their own houses; they knew everything about it, how to fix them, where to add rooms, how to make them more secure, and were happy about the place they lived in. Now they were supposed to move to a place without participating in the decision and to houses they knew little about. “After I moved, I found out that steel frame was a good system of construction and a quick one to deliver 1044 houses in two years. Why did they never explain that? I believe that if you give someone information, arguments, examples, people take it better than if you hide everything”.

While she continued resisting, a second problem emerged by the end of 2019. When people moved out, the government demolished their old houses below the highway to prevent squatting. Everything was left covered by dust and debris. Often, they broke pipes, so places started flooding; the electricity of the houses close by was still on, people threw garbage everywhere, and rats were all over the place. For those still negotiating their relocation, this was perceived as a method of pressure which again increased the mistrust and tension with the government. That was a difficult moment for Leslie, “I was resisting alone. People started to move and everywhere around was demolished, it looked like a war zone, it was insecure, I was afraid. It was unliveable”.

 

Image 5: The area below the highway while families were moving out. Source: provided by the interviewee (date unknown).

 

Soon after, the pandemic started, and Leslie got sick in May. “I was 16 days in the hospital. I was afraid that if people found out my house was empty, they would squat it, and I would lose everything I had been defending. So when I got out, I said, I will accept the new house but under my terms”. As soon as she was discharged from the hospital, Leslie saw the available flats and found a house she liked. Even though she was happy, she did not want to show it because she did not trust the government officials and wanted to negotiate the recognition of the value of all the materials in her house. Through her fight, she moved to a house of her choice and will pay fixed monthly repayments for 30 years, minus the value she negotiated with the government. Every year she has to make an income statement, “I can pay for now, but I know that if I lose my job, I can make the income statement and stop paying”.

Image 6: Leslie and her husband the day they moved out from their house below the highway while it was being demolished. Source: provided by the interviewee (date unknown).

 

Image 7: Leslie´s new home. Source: provided by the interviewee (date unknown).

Again, misinformation and mistrust are present in her narrative: “If I had money to pay it all at once I would, I would feel safer if I fully own the place and nobody can move me”. The Law raises relevant tools for dweller´s permanence after tenure formalisation stating that dwellers must be provided with tenure security in the dwellings they occupy and that in no case the inability to pay could hinder guaranteeing this right. The Law discourages possible gentrification or uprooting processes, seeking the current dwellers’ permanence.

Information could have brought dwellers certainty regarding the policy outcome and their right to stay. However, Lesli does not trust the policy or the Law because her participation was not a “democratic stance; a right of people to decide, in an informed manner and through processes of collective reflection, on the direction of their habitat” (Populab, 2022, p.32).

 

Learning and growth

A lot of Leslie’s fear existed because she did not access information “If you give people information and tools, you don’t hide anything, and you make them part of the process, even if you think that they can oppose it, I think it is worth it and better. If not, it is like gossip”. Leslie believes she is in a better place one year after her move. Nevertheless, how different things would have been if this policy had included and recognised her in the first place, benefiting from her right to participate in those decisions that involved her own life and home. “I would have liked to be involved; I think everything would have been better. In this type of redevelopment process, participation is necessary”.

When I met Leslie, she challenged me to rethink justice rather than come up with a single normative or political vision of housing justice (Bhan, 2019) to reshape my approach of participation in planning to participation as planning (Frediani and Cociña, 2019). During those years, many of her neighbours and even government officials tried to discredit her, accusing her of doing politics. She was fighting for her right to housing; she knew nothing about bills and laws until they directly impacted her. She got involved at that point but did not do things only for her sake; she insurgently fought for justice. She wanted to be recognised, exercise her capacity, express herself and participate in determining her actions and the conditions of those actions (Young, 1990). Those are “universalist values, in that they assume the equal moral worth of all persons” (Young, 1990, p.37).

When I asked her how she could describe this process, she said it was about learning and growth. She became self-conscious of her status as a citizen, collectively demanding rights and battling oppression and domination (Young, 1990) to fulfil that dream that, 32 years ago, her parents sought. She informally bought a house eight years ago. However, a policy intended to upgrade her quality of life made her feel threatened of losing it, mainly because she was never included in the development of that path that comprehended her life and her home. Now, she has a house with a formal deed and a mortgage. She is happy about it, but that was not the only thing she wanted. She was unrecognised, on the side-lines, but she finally determined the conditions under how she would accept her new house, showed she could insurgently and collectively fight until her equal worth was recognised. This is why it is so important to tell her story.

 

Bibliography

Asociación por la Igualdad y la Justicia (2021) Cuánto avanzó la reurbanización en el Barrio Padre Carlos Mugica (ex Villa 31 y 31 bus) en el período 2016-2021?. Available at:   https://acij.org.ar/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/informe-vFinal-interactiva.pdf

Bhan, G. (2019). Notes on a Southern Urban Practice. Environment and Urbanisation, 31:2

Bhan, G. & Harish, S. (2021). Housing Justice: A View from Indian Cities. Coursera Online Course

CEDLAS (2022) Poverty Statistics. Available at:   https://www.cedlas.econo.unlp.edu.ar/wp/en/estadisticas/sedlac/estadisticas/#1496165262484-7f826c3f-b5c3

Davis, M. (2004) Planet of Slums. Urban Involution and the Informal Proletariat

Delamata, G. (2016). Una década de activismo judicial en las villas de Buenos Aires. Revista Direito & Práxis, VII 14, 567-587.

Dirección de estadísticas y censos (2021) Porcentaje de viviendas habitadas, hogares y población en villas sobre el total de la Ciudad. Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Años 2006/2021.  Available at:  https://www.estadisticaciudad.gob.ar/eyc/?cat=164

Fraser, N. (2009) “Scales of justice: Reimagining political space in a globalizing world”, Columbia University Press: New York, pp. 12-29. (Chapter 2: Reframing justice in a globalizing world).

Frediani & Cociña (2019) ‘Participation as planning’: strategies from the South to challenge the limits of planning

Hirst, P.Q. &Thompson, G. (1996) Globalisation in question: the international economy and the possibilities of governance.

Payne, G. K. &Majale, M.  (2004) The urban housing manual: making regulatory frameworks work for the poor

Populab (2022) Policy brief Mejoramiento Integral del Hábitat como estrategia para la transición hacia la paz territorial Urbana. Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia

Quinchía Roldán, S. M. (2012), Urbanismo social: del discurso a la espacialización del concepto. Caso Medellín – Colombia. En 9ª Bienal del Coloquio de Transformaciones Territoriales. Huellas e incertidumbres en los procesos de desarrollo territorial. (pp 8). Tucumán.

Sandercock, L. (1998) “The Death of Modernist Planning: Radical Praxis for a Postmodern Age”, in Douglass, M. and Friedmann, J. (eds) Cities for citizens: planning and the rise of civil society in a global age. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, pp. 163–184.

Uitermark & Nicholls (2017) Planning for social justice: Strategies, dilemmas, tradeoffs

Van Gelder, J.L., Cravino, M.C & Ostuni, F.(2013). Movilidad social espacial en los asentamientos informales de Buenos Aires. R. B. ESTUDOS URBANOS E REGIONAIS 15 (2). Available at: http://ri.conicet.gov.ar/bitstream/handle/11336/12248/CONICET_Digital_Nro.15339_A.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y

Young, Iris Marion, (1990) Justice and the politics of difference, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press

 

[1] Available at : https://digesto.buenosaires.gob.ar/buscador/ver/21159

[2] Available at : https://boletinoficial.buenosaires.gob.ar/normativaba/norma/448918

 

 

This housing story is part of a mini-series revealing the complex ways in which personal and political aspects of shelter provision interweave over time, and impact on multiple aspects of people’s lives. Space for strategic choice is nearly always available to some degree, but the parameters of that choice can be dramatically restricted or enhanced by context. The wide range of experience presented in this collection shines a light on the wealth of knowledge and insights about housing that our students regularly bring to the DPU’s learning processes.

‘Deserving the city’: Sara’s housing story

By Catalina Marino, on 8 June 2022

‘Look what I was like when I moved to the ‘villa’’, Sara told me, sending me her photo via WhatsApp. We have been talking about her housing story for weeks now. According to her grandma, the picture was taken in their first home in Villa 21-24, in the south of Buenos Aires.

A decade later, with a partner and a kid, the girl in the photo would move to a bigger house near the Riachuelo’s riverbanks. The location of this second home will change her story. In 2008, the Supreme Court of Justice ruled that, due to pollution, all families living within 35 meters of the river should be relocated. Paradoxically, from then on, being registered next to the Riachuelo became a golden ticket to access social housing.

I met Sara in 2018 when I joined the Housing Institute of Buenos Aires to coordinate the second phase of the relocation program. Over time, our bureaucratic exchanges turned into long afternoons of conversations and mates. Sara and her husband told me multiple stories about the community and helped me understand some slum dynamics. Now, I once again rely on them to re-discover Buenos Aires’ housing policy.

Image 1: Sara (left) and her brother Walter (right). Source: provided by the interviewee (date unknown).

***

Since their emergence, the villas (squatter settlements) have been subject to eclectic government policies. A product of internal migration in the late ’30s, they were first seen as a temporary phenomenon that enabled the country’s industrialization. Later, the successive military governments considered that these ‘illegal occupations’ entailed a social threat. During the ’70s, families were expelled to their ‘places of origin’ or simply dumped on vacant land outside the city’s limits. Eradication policies and forced disappearances explain the drastic decrease in slum population: from 213,823 in 1976 to 34,064 in 1980 (Dadamia, 2019). ‘Living in Buenos Aires is not for everyone but for those who deserve it’, synthesized the Housing Minister of that time (in Oszlak, 1991).

Fortunately, Sara’s story begins at a brighter time. She was born in 1985, during the first years of democratic rule. Committed to prosecuting human rights violations, the new government definitely abandoned the eradication paradigm towards the long-settled villas. In Buenos Aires, the ‘Slum Settlement Program’ (Act 39.753/84) recognized the right of slum dwellers to remain in their place. Later, the right to housing would be guaranteed in the 1994’s National Constitution.

However, none of the successive housing and land regularization programs achieved widespread implementation. As part of the neoliberal reforms of the 1990s, the ‘Plan Arraigo’ (Law 23,967/1991) promoted the sale of all public land deemed ‘unnecessary’ and the transfer of property titles to their occupants. But even this policy designed to guarantee tenure security was limited and suspended shortly after. In Buenos Aires, only a few received housing through some short-lived ‘street opening’ programs and even less acquired their land titles (Di Virgilio, 2015).

 

Our story begins with a State that, while recognizing its responsibility in guaranteeing housing rights, systematically fails to fulfill it. Describing the literal waiting process inside welfare offices, Javier Auyero argues that the urban poor are forced to become ‘patients of the state’. Because even this ‘downsized, decentralized, and “hollowed out” state’ can still provide them ‘limited but vital welfare benefits’ (Auyero, 2012, p. 5). But as others have said before, this waiting process is always active. Individually or collectively, the urban poor deploy different strategies to dispute or negotiate with the State (Fainstein, 2020), and they learn which are the ‘correct ways to ask’ (Olejarczyk, 2017). They embrace ‘survivability’, because while the existence of the villas has ceased to be threatened, their residents still live a life ‘in a constant state of instability’ (Lees and Robinson, 2021, p. 594). As we shall see, Sara’s story is one about survival.

***

Sara arrived at Villa 21-24 when she was still a kid. Established on public land, near industrial areas and railways, the settlement had reached 12,000 families in the ‘70s before the eradication policy reduced the number in half. Sara’s father, Ángel, had endured the military rule in the villa but eventually managed to move to his father’s house 30km away from Buenos Aires. However, with three kids and a wife who did not adapt to the new town, he decided to return.

They bought a house there in the late ’80s, taking advantage of the new democratic approach. The certainty that they will never be evicted by the State is strongly felt throughout Sara’s narration. ‘We were never afraid of being evicted. Here in the villa, (…) I never saw bulldozers go by.’

Of those early years, Sara’s memories are somewhat blurred. Her parents separated shortly after their return. Sara stayed in the house with her father and her younger sister Yanina. There were times when they also lived with Walter and Pablo, her mother’s children, but dates are not clear. What is certain is that the house was small, made of corrugated metal and wood, and had two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a bath.

Like most houses, theirs had an informal power line, but it did not have an independent water connection. They had to go to the community faucet in the ‘middle corridor’ (pasillo) to get water. She recalls that many people went to look for water there. Maybe it was the only faucet for the entire neighbourhood, but she is not sure. What we know is that all the infrastructure was developed by the community. A true example of ‘social production of the habitat’. Even today, official water and electricity lines are found only on the villa’s perimeter and on the two avenues that cross it. They only reach what the public services providers persevere in calling the ‘formal city’.

Although the house was small, they did not reform it until Sara got pregnant at the age of 14. To give them some independence, her father decided to fix a small ‘brick room’ on the side of the house. She moved there with her partner, Leonardo, when their son Ezequiel was born.

Image 4: Villa 21-24 in 2002. Source: Google Earth

***

‘ – Did you ever think about leaving?

– One always dreams of leaving (…). But the opportunity didn’t come along. (…) Leonardo was 16 and didn’t have a permanent job. He did informal gigs, waste-picking with a cart. (…) We lived day to day’.

 

Sara could not afford to move alone, even less outside the villa, where landlords usually request tenants to guarantee the lease with another proprietor’s deed. Buying a house through the market was even less of an option, as access to long-term credit and loans is restricted to those with formal income, not to say, with substantial previous savings in US dollars. She was also skeptical of state programs. Her grandmother had tried to access a home through the cooperative in charge of implementing the ‘land regularization program’. But despite having paid several installments, the cooperative leader ended up arbitrarily assigning the land plots in exchange for cash. Dozens of families were scammed, and the State did nothing. They were on their own.

However, even with their daily struggles, they managed to save some money. Eventually, in the early 2000s, they had the opportunity to move to a larger house within the villa, which they jointly bought with Sara’s father. This was a ‘brick house’, with water and electricity connections, a living room, a bathroom and a large patio. It also had three bedrooms, which could accommodate what were now three distinct families: Sara’s, Yanina’s, and Angel’s.

Interestingly, in Sara’s account, there are no references to the Riachuelo river, even when the new house is located a few meters from it. However, in 2004, on the opposite riverbank, a group of neighbors filed a lawsuit denouncing the environmental damage they had suffered due to the Riachuelo’s high pollution levels. In 2008, the Supreme Court of Justice would order the National State, the Province and the City of Buenos Aires to clean up the river’s basin and improve the resident’s livelihoods. Two years later, the Court would further rule that all the people residing 35 meters from the Riachuelo had to be relocated. With this decision, 1534 families living in Villa 21-24 were granted the right to social housing.

Image 5: Villa 21-24 in 2010. In purple, the relocation area. Source: Google Earth (2010)

***

In 2011 the Housing Institute conducted a census to identify which families would be affected by the relocation. By this time, the residents had managed to organize themselves into a Body of Delegates elected by each ‘block’. They had also requested the presence of the Public Defense and other judicial institutions to monitor the government’s procedures. But Sara never actively participated in those spaces.

“We didn’t believe it (…). The 2011 census was like any other census, once again. They didn’t tell us that one day that census would help us have an apartment… or a different life… like open the tap and getting hot water’.

However, with time, the 2011 census certificate became the most precious document, the one that could guarantee, essentially, an improvement of the living conditions, the ‘hot water’. Eventually, even houses were sold ‘with the former owner’s census certificate’, as a strategy to transfer with it the ‘relocation right’.

Image 6: Villa 21-24 immediately after the relocation. Source: City Housing Institute (2014).

***

The first relocation began in 2013. The Housing Institute was willing to start from the western end of the villa, where the houses’ demolition would allow the extension of the coastal road, but the Delegates refused. San Blas was the newest neighborhood, ‘squattered’ in 2006. Although they held the same relocation rights, community criteria valued ‘seniority’, that in this case also meant longer exposure to pollution. Backed by the Public Defense lawyers, they convinced the government to relocate the families suffering critical health issues first. This meant starting from the middle, closer to Sara’s house.

In a process denounced for its limited community participation, between 2013 and 2015, 165 families would be moved to the ‘Padre Mugica’ complex, 11 km away from their original homes. However, those years are blurred in Sara’s memories. Around this time, Leonardo’s older brother is murdered by one of his longtime neighbours. When arrested, his relatives come out to threaten Sara and Leonardo’s family. So in an act of explicit survival, leaving all their belongings behind, they abandon their house. For the next few years, they will become tenants in Zavaleta, a settlement located next to the Villa 21-24.

***

From my reconstruction of the story, I know that Sara’s father moved to ‘Padre Mugica’ in 2015. According to Sara, by this time, Ángel was suffering from health issues, and their house, which before stood out for its spaciousness and comparative beauty, had deteriorated sharply. Because of the ‘imminent’ relocation, ‘new construction’ was banned by the government, and even emergency improvements were seen as a waste of resources. Angel’s situation did not go unnoticed by ‘el Choro’ and ‘la Pety’, the Delegates of Sara’s block. Mostly because of their claim, he was prioritized in the relocation, even though his house was not scheduled for demolition at this stage.

Sara remembers accompanying her father to some government meetings before the relocation. There she was able to tell her story to a social worker: she had been forced to leave her home, and although she was no longer living by the Riachuelo, she needed to secure her relocation right. The following years, she would tell her tale multiple times to different government employees, including the Public Defense lawyers. The Housing Institute finally gave her a ‘signed compromise’ where they guaranteed her an apartment in the ‘Padre Mugica’ Complex, which was still under construction.

***

During the five years she lived in Zavaleta, Sara had to move three times. She suffered the instability of the vast majority of tenants, aggravated by the informality of contracts. Fortunately, the new monthly rental costs were not a problem. By that time, Leonardo had a formal job that provided a stable income. At some point, Sara applied for a ‘housing subsidy’ from the local government. But she did that to reinforce her housing rights. ‘I asked for the subsidy because I was told that (…) if I left [the Housing Institute] alone and didn’t bother them (…) they would forget about me’.

However, this ‘active wait’ was long. Sara was meant to be relocated to the  ‘Padre Mugica’ complex, but the government decided to cancel its construction when the building’s quality proved to be deficient. Learning from this failed experience, the Delegates mobilized to get the new houses built next to the villa. But even when they managed to get a bill sanctioned (Law Nº 5172/14), the construction was extremely slow. Four years passed by without progress.

Image 8: Sara’s housing story. Source: Google Earth (2020).

***

At the beginning of 2018, the Housing Institute carried out a new survey to update the 2011 census, although no new ‘housing rights’ were granted. This time, the relocation would begin from the San Blas neighborhood, but some ‘urgent’ cases would be considered.

‘And that’s when my aunt Elsa told me, ‘Sari, go find out because they already called me twice’. When I went, the guy told me that I wasn’t on the list. So I brought him the census certificate and the signed compromise’.

Unlike most families, whose fight had been to relocate closest to their original homes, Sara needed to move far from her former neighbors. ‘San Blas’ neighborhood was the best option for her. In that process, she surrendered yet again to State inspection, of which, this time, I was a part. She registered with her family in a new census. She told her story for the umpteenth time to the new government’s team. She participated in ten relocation workshops to meet her new neighbors. She voted to elect their ‘building’ leader. She actively argued to be assigned an apartment next to her son, Ezequiel, who by this time had his own child and therefore required an independent home.

I was there when, in January 2019, Sara signed the 30-year loan and her apartment’s deed. A week later, she finally moved into her new home.

***

Sara’s story is one about survival. In a country where only the wealthy can access housing through the market, Sara learned how to patiently deal with the State. She faced first the State as an absence: one that at least would not violently evict her from the house she self-procured but that provided little else. Later, the State became the inevitable intermediary, the one from whom to demand access to safe, secure and proper housing. A right granted to her as a way of exception, of which so few were beneficiaries. And in that process, she became a ‘patient of the state’.

But Sara’s waiting was also active. She toured countless public offices, reminding the ever-changing state employees of her story. Being registered on the 2011 census became her best narrative. But, as the 900 families still living by the Riachuelo prove, this was not enough.

Image 9: San Blas’s housing complex. Source: City Housing Institute (2020).

Excused behind budgetary constraints, the State demands the urban poor to be worthy of the public benefits. In a reinvented ‘meritocratic’ logic, it forces them to build their stories around ‘topics of misfortune’. Rights are granted according to a proven critical ‘urgency’. With a kinder face, the democratic State creates new categories to measure who ‘deserves’ and who ‘does not deserve’ to be benefited from the right to housing.

But Sara understood how to tell her story. She learned how to play the game. She strategically negotiated with the State and won. She showed she ‘deserved the city’.

***

Since 2016, the new local government has promoted upgrading projects in four of the city’s largest villas. The programs contemplated the construction of social housing for those affected by the construction of new roads and public spaces. Unfortunately, scarce resources were granted to incremental in-situ improvements. The delays in infrastructure works (water, sanitation and drainage) mean that, in the short term, proper housing is only guaranteed for those few relocated to the ‘new homes’. This time, different rules determine who is worthy of State benefits.

But no housing story ends with the relocation. Because living in the ‘formal’ city and paying the mortgage, services and public expenses create other challenges for the urban poor. And once the ‘urgency’ is resolved, the State tends to disappear.

Sara’s survivability (like many others) will undoubtedly be displayed thousands of times more.

 

 

References

Auyero, J. (2012) Patients of the State. The Politics of Waiting in Argentina. Duke University Press. Durham & London: Duke University Press.

Dadamia, R. (2019) ‘Asentamientos precarios en la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires’, Población de Buenos Aires., pp. 20–33.

Di Virgilio, M.M. (2015) ‘Urbanizaciones de origen informal en Buenos Aires. Lógicas de producción de suelo urbano y acceso a la vivienda’, Estudios demográficos y urbanos, 30(3), pp. 651–690.

Fainstein, C. (2020) ‘Problemas del mientras tanto: espera y justicia en la causa “Mendoza”.’, Avá, (36), pp. 165–193.

Lees, L. and Robinson, B. (2021) ‘Beverley’s Story: Survivability on one of London’s newest gentrification frontiers’, City, 25(5–6), pp. 590–613. doi:10.1080/13604813.2021.1987702.

Najman, M. (2017) ‘El nacimiento de un nuevo barrio: El caso del Conjunto Urbano Padre Mugica en la ciudad de Buenos Aires y sus impactos sobre las estructuras de oportunidades de sus habitantes’, Territorios, (37), p. 123. doi:10.12804/revistas.urosario.edu.co/territorios/a.4978.

Olejarczyk, R. (2017) ‘El tiempo de la (in)definición en las políticas de vivienda: De “tópicos del infortunio” a “saberes expertos” [The time of (in)definition in housing policies: from “clichés of misfortune” to “expert knowledge” ]’, Trabajo Social Hoy, 82(Tercer Trimestre), pp. 89–110. doi:10.12960/TSH.2017.0017.

Oszlak, O. (1991) Merecer la ciudad. Los pobres y el derecho al espacio urbano. Buenos Aires. Argentina.

 

 

This housing story is part of a mini-series revealing the complex ways in which personal and political aspects of shelter provision interweave over time, and impact on multiple aspects of people’s lives. Space for strategic choice is nearly always available to some degree, but the parameters of that choice can be dramatically restricted or enhanced by context. The wide range of experience presented in this collection shines a light on the wealth of knowledge and insights about housing that our students regularly bring to the DPU’s learning processes.

Cinema as a vehicle for social integration in the city

By ucfumtr, on 17 July 2015

Cinema is one of the least accessible forms of art. It demands a certain amount of financial investment into equipment for filming, lightning and sound, people like actors, assistants and editors – not to mention time. Nevertheless our digital world has opened new doors for visual storytelling through the democratisation and affordability of tools necessary for filmmaking [1].

Inhabitants of excluded spaces – those living outside the ‘formal’ city – are able to use the tools of the digital age, from mobile phones and affordable recording equipment, to online platforms for funding and distributing films, to tell their own stories about the cities they live and experience. Informal settlements are part of the landscape in many cities in the Global South, where for some social exclusion, discrimination, drugs and violence are part of everyday life [2].

Cinema

Mainstream cinema has picked up these themes through films like El Elefante Blanco, Tropa de Elite and recently Trash. These films have been supported by formal studios and were able to find distribution channels into mainstream cinemas.

However there are directors living in informal settlements who have created fictional depictions of life, while adopting a more realistic approach with its basis in the world within which they live. The interesting link lies more between the cinematic representations of the city than with the story. The mise-en-scène and the urban space not only imply a cinematic setting, but also indicate sociocultural context.

The realistic mise-en-scène of these very low-budget films does not illustrate absolute authenticity but is rather the filmmaker’s articulation of their reality [3]. It is an invitation for the “outsiders” – people living in the formal sector – to understand where these dwellers live and what their perceptions of reality are.

Image by Eflon via Flickr: flickr.com/photos/eflon

These types of films – similar to post-war Italian neorealist cinema [4] – privilege shooting on location and adopt a style of cinematography visually similar to a documentary. The example of Cesar Gonzalez, an Argentine film director living in the informal settlement Carlos Gardel in Buenos Aires province, is relevant.

His films are a testimony to the power of art as a tool for social recognition and integration. Cesar Gonzalez found a voice in cinema that he didn’t have before when he was involved with gangs and smugglers. He directed his first film Diagnóstico Esperanza in 2013 which was filmed with the local people from the informal settlement Carlos Gardel (the film is available to watch on YouTube).

The film depicts life in a space within the city that has its own vocabulary, its own vision of the world, its own soul. As “outsiders” we walk in the streets of this unfamiliar world. His films progressed a wider social acknowledgement among intellectuals and movie critics of informal settlements not just being seen as excluded spaces, but also replete with excluded people.

His latest film “What can a body endure?” (Qué puede un cuerpo?) was made possible by crowd-sourcing funds and then released online via Youtube. It has currently more than 200,000 views. His two films so far have gained critical praise and have been screened in a very prestigious local cinema in Buenos Aires [5]. The National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts (INCAA) is currently funding his third film.

Cinema has been historically involved with political contexts, helping to contribute to a collective perception of reality, and reflecting the state of society at that time. As the example of Cesar Gonzalez has shown, not only can films become a vehicle for telling a story in an artistic way but also as a tool for social recognition and integration – breaking down some of the physical barriers that seem to divide the city.

References


Marco Trombetta holds an MSc in Environment and Sustainable Development from the DPU. He was involved in local politics in Argentina, participating in several NGOs and international forums such as the G20. He has a passion for Cinema and he writes film reviews in his blog Red Curtain Cinema.