Vivienda social. Investigaciones, ensayos y entrevistas

In Argentina, the 2001 national census showed that more than 2,600,000 households lived in deficient dwellings. This means slightly more than 13 million inhabitants, or 36 per cent of the national total population. Even though these numbers represent an improvement compared with 1991, they still configure a tremendous political and social problem that has come to be called the “national housing crisis”.

In this book, Gazzoli discusses the historical evolution of this crisis, including critical analyses of recent state policies and programmes, also overcoming the narrow-minded statistically based descriptions and the usually sectoral political responses to the problem. The book compiles research, essays and interviews produced by the author after decades of work as an academic and a consultant.

In Part I (“Observing the Housing Situation through the National Census”), the analysis focuses on the achievements and failures of the housing policies developed by Alfonsín’s and Menem’s governments between 1984 and 2001. Although the analysis also considers previous democratic governments and dictatorships, these are taken only as antecedents. Chapter 1 observes historical census data in order to verify an evolution of the housing crisis in Argentina. Chapter 2 analyzes the Fondo Nacional de Vivienda (FONAVI, National Housing Fund), an institution created in 1972 to tackle the housing crisis. But FONAVI’s unrealistic goals, amidst national political instability and the chronic lack of efficient implementation that characterized the 1970s and up to the mid-1980s, curtailed its effectiveness and worsened the crisis. FONAVI was finally reformed in 1992, and Chapter 3 analyzes the more recent national housing policies operating up to the present and evaluates their impact. Chapter 4 specifically observes the several social and technical dimensions of the rental housing market in the country.

Part II (“The Inhabitants of the Deficit”) brings together a series of essays, fieldwork research and interviews focused on urban and peri-urban low-income inhabitants and their general conditions of life. This is a qualitative-based approach, so the aim here is to bring the perspectives of groups usually marginalized from the property market or the public housing programmes. Chapter 5 focuses on several of the particular urban asentamientos (low-income settlements) spread across the fringes of Greater Buenos Aires. Chapters 6 and 7 observe other forms of extra-institutional dwellings: squatter occupation and inquilinatos (the latter is not only a form of extreme sub-division of derelict buildings in urban areas, occupied by low-income dwellers, but also a profitable way for landlords to milk properties). Chapter 8 observes and compares all these modalities, provides some general conclusions about the diversity of forms of dwellings existing in the country, and addresses the impact of these modalities on the social life and mental health of their inhabitants. Chapter 9 brings the perspectives of those who live in the asentamientos, many of whom are rural–urban migrants. These interviews were conducted between 1985 and 1995 and provide a first-hand, in-depth understanding of the real implications of the still existing housing crisis, depicted by the people who experience and suffer it everyday.