Main trends in Argentinean Habitat Policy

RODRIGUEZ, MARÍA CARLA

TRIALOG

Trailogo Association

Lugar: Berlin ; Año: 2007 p. 33 - 41

0724-6234

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the Argentinean housing policies during the last three decades. During the 70s, the national public system for housing production was sustained by a central financial instrument (FONAVI). Its aim was to produce new dwellings grouped in large housing estates, and the large building firms were its privileged target group. With the arrival of democracy, particularly during the 90s, a ?turn? towards demand was announced. But the decentralisation of FONAVI, crowned by the approval of the Housing Federal Law sustained, in fact, the provincial governments? different needs and political strategies. Some programmes particularly directed to social habitat production (SHP)[1] for ownership regularisation and neighbourhood improvement were also designed, but with a restricted scope aimed at the current situation. During the first decade of the 21st century, with the post crisis recovery, a re-centralising turn defined the housing policy anew as the gears for economic development....of the conventional capitalist firms.  During that period, the main emphases maintained the divorce among political decision, management of resources and the fulfilment of the popular sectors? basic needs. Production policies and access to urban land (through the State?s actions and omissions) reinforced these trends. But, historically accumulated experiences and proposals also point towards reverting that division. For example, Law 341 of the City of Buenos Aires opens a path towards cooperative self-management of the habitat in consolidated urban areas, giving way to the development and participation of social organisations that built themselves up as political subjects and as producers of the city. [1] It refers to different habitat modalities based on the popular sectors’ productive and organisational abilities.