Ownership in Common: Collective Projects and Individual Aspirations in Low-Income Housing Cooperatives in Buenos Aires

VALERIA PROCUPEZ; MARIA CARLA RODRIGUEZ

Berlin

Conferencia; Exploring Urban Ownership: Practices, Places, and Citizenships in a Global Perspective; 2021

Centre for Metropolitan Studies, Berlin.

Roughly twenty years have gone by since the Buenos Aires city council sanctioned the SelfManaged Housing Act enabling low-income cooperatives to receive and manage public loans with the aimof providing permanent housing for their members through relatively artisanal processes. Around 70housing complexes involving over a thousand units have been built and are currently inhabited in desirableareas of the city, with good access to services and amenities. Previous residents of disadvantaged housingconditions -tenements, squats, single room occupancies, etc.- have presently settled in their neighborhoods,established their livelihoods and made their homes. And still....a relentless debate about the final propertyform of the housing projects is ongoing. As the lengthy processes of acquisition and construction are finalizing, successive cityadministrations have stopped short of endorsing collective property schemes and instead promote individualtitle deeds. Thus, instead of legalizing what cooperatives have actually been doing (holding propertytogether as legal entities), authorities suggest starting something anew (individualizing rights andresponsibilities). Titling becomes a break or interruption of the existing practices rather than theirculmination. Often arguing the cooperative is just a stage in the process, government officials cite legalobstacles, even when the national legislation allows entities to hold cooperative private property[1]. As aresult, the collective nature of the decades-long processes of accessing affordable and quality housing inthe city is not reflected in the favored property form. Even more telling, is that many cooperative members still retain the aspiration to individualhomeownership, broadly perceived as the basis for wealth accumulation and social mobility as well as thebeacon of personal autonomy. Members can be distrustful of what they deem the arbitrary tendencies ofsocial organizations, focusing their objections on what common property hinders or prevents (selling in themarket for profit) and eschewing the consideration of what it has effectively enabled (permanent access toaffordable quality housing in central areas of the city) and promises to do (sustain access in time and protectaffordability from fluctuations in the market). Therefore, the painstaking collective processes oforganization and production of housing are challenged not only by governmental and systemic forces thatnormalize private appropriation of urban space, but also by tensions at work within the residents' owndesires and expectations about homeownership. In this paper, we examine material, symbolic and affective aspects that strengthen the value of thecommon, by tracing the trajectories through which organizations struggled for resources, secured locationsand appropriated places, built their homes and constituted communities. We look at these different stagesof spatial practices through which residents anchor their everyday lives in the city in order to understandhow ownership is collectively sustained. We then examine how security of tenure is better served by a legal status that effectivelyencompasses the collective dimensions of the whole process, such as a cooperative property with membersas life-long users, than by individual private property translated into a document. Not only does commonownership preserve housing affordable for members protecting them from economic instability and marketvolatility but it also ensures the continuation of the collective practices that involve broader networks of solidarity and care, which have proven substantial during emergency situations, such as the Covid-19pandemic.