Construction in Palermo (Photo: Beatrice Murch)

Today’s Argentina is experiencing some troubles within. The effects of globalisation and the economic reforms pushed on its name, population growth, and the looming global financial crisis, mean that the country is experiencing housing and employment issues that need to be confronted sooner rather than later. Through the recently announced Argentina Credit Programme (ProCreAr), there is hope that these issues affecting Argentina will be addressed, keeping the country on the path to recovery and growth.

Although housing issues and unemployment may not be apparent to someone casually walking the streets of downtown Buenos Aires, the city’s beautiful architecture hides a housing crisis that a decade of strong growth has not eased. Over a year ago, in the Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Montserrat, a couple of blocks from the famous Avenida 9 de Julio, the street was steel-gate barricaded and within its confines were families with tarps pitched and camp-stoves, cooking. Multiple families had been kicked-out of the abandoned building where they were all living. To say that they had been “evicted” would imply a formalised tenancy they did not have.

This was not the first or the last indication of the housing crisis affecting Argentina. The figures spell it out: almost 1,000 villas miserias (shanty towns) and precarious settlements in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area alone; 40,000 inhabitants in just one villa close to the Jose León Suarez train station; four or five (exact number unknown) families living in that one improvised home next to Avenida 9 de Julio. But, who’s counting?

According to Omar David Varela, a professor at the University of General Sarmiento, there is an approximate 3.5 million nation-wide housing deficit. The City of Buenos Aires and the Greater Buenos Aires area hold an approximate 14 million inhabitants of the nation’s 40 million. Official estimates show that, out of 4 million homes in this area, 1.25 million need some type of repair or extension to be considered up to standard, whilst 46,000 are beyond repair and need to be replaced.

Furthermore, Argentina’s housing deficit is intertwined with its employment issues. There are still many people who are not making adequate pay, falling into an income bracket much lower than “middle class” standards. They are, for example, the urban recyclers (cartoneros) and the domestic and construction workers.

Inside Jobs: Globalisation’s Impact on Buenos Aires

According to academics and their numbers, globalisation has exacerbated a series of issues in Argentina, and specifically in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area.

Although these issues stem from further back, the politic and economic climate since the 1970s up to the financial crisis in 2001 is often referred to as the apex of social struggle. The deterioration of socio-economic indicators during this period and the lack of appropriate urban planning, coupled with an ongoing historic process of increasing urbanisation, put a great strain on the housing situation in large cities as internal migration expanded.

Villa 31 is one of the more famous Villas (shantytowns) in Buenos Aires located alongside the traintracks in Retiro. (Photo: Professor Guillermo Tella)

Guillermo Tella, professor of Architecture and Urban Studies at the University of General Sarmiento, refers to these years as the phase of Argentine capitalism when the country moved towards an economic model favouring the free market and causing an inequitable re-distribution of housing. Tella’s colleague, Professor Juan Lombardo, agrees with his observations that the current situation and social make-up is a result of the free market practices implemented since 1976.

“[Those years] signified the destruction of Argentina’s industry… increasing poverty and marginalisation. The tertiary sector as the core of the economy meant that capital financing was directed externally, and it also produced a transformation of class systems and occupational categories,” he says.

The transformation in employment meant lower pay and, ultimately, the inability of accessing home ownership, especially within the downtown core. As affluence moved into neighbourhoods like Palermo, the price of housing increased, making it impossible for low income families to continue living there.

“Where do they go?” asks Professor Varela. “They are pushed out and they move into the villas.”

Growing from Within: ProCreAr-tion

Recently, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner stated that, “just as work is a great social organiser, the home is a great family organiser”.

On the 12th June 2012, President Fernández announced a formalised plan to address this housing deficit. It is called the Argentina Credit Programme (ProCreAr) and its objective is to offer 100,000 credits to build homes or improve existing ones. The initial contribution by the Treasury will be of $3 billion, but the final amount destined to these credits will be determined by demand. It is estimated that the credits will benefit up to 400,000 people.

Table of plans available by ProCreAR

According to Varela, the programme will benefit applicants through two streams. The first is for those who already own land, and will use these credits to construct homes or to build additions to existing ones. The second stream will use the credits to build new homes on land that is currently owned by the national state, and that will eventually be sold to private owners. This land is not just within the city of Buenos Aires, but also scattered throughout the provinces. Some academics see this as an attempt at equal opportunity of home ownership, as it offers houses to the middle and lower classes.

The credit programme is financed and run by the National Administration of Social Security (ANSES) in collaboration with Banco Hipotecario. Together, they have developed a credit-repayment system that varies according to each applicant’s income and amount needed to construct a new home. Instead of a standard rate, those with lower incomes will pay back the loan at a lower interest rate over a longer period. Those in a higher bracket will have a higher interest rate over a shorter time.

As the programme commences, the question of accessibility remains. According to the ANSES website, the prerequisites are simple, yet extensive. People between 18 and 65 years of age with proof of income and no negative financial records can qualify for a credit, although that does not guarantee they will obtain it. Over 300,000 applications were received within the first week of the announcement, after 1.4 million people accessed the ANSES website looking for information.

A Twofold Aim

Due to the programme’s accessibility, academics point to ProCreAr as a chance to seriously address two major national issues: housing and employment.

Construction in Puerto Madero (Photo: Beatrice Murch)

Varela points out that at least one-third of the housing deficit is strictly lack of buildings, whereas the other two-thirds are due to lack of adequate living standards. Therefore, he says, ProCreAr “is a way to solve at least one-third of the housing deficit.”

However, Varela is concerned about how these home improvements will also raise the land value of the areas where they are located. For example, if a plot of empty land is worth $100 per hectare, building a complete and modern complex will add architectural value to the land, raising its value to, say, $200 per hectare. This shift would make it more difficult for those with lower incomes and/or who do not have access to the credits to afford to purchase land. It could mean that those locations will not be available to them and they will potentially have to move into areas that are within their means, usually the villas miserias or other precarious settlements.

Still, ProCreAr is considered a step forward. Tella refers to it as the “gradual recuperation process … [to] a dignified and sanitary environment, open and integrated, that contributes to the integration of the urban social and economic fabric”. He also mentions how the credit programme is not the only way to push housing reform, which should also include measures that are “based in the intermediate and ground-level organisations, that have the people as their principal protagonists.”

The second way in which ProCreAr may help Argentina is by stimulating the economy and providing jobs to construction companies and independent contractors. With the potential for 100,000 new homes and additions to be made over the next year, the initiative will, according to the government, “provide jobs for hundreds of thousands of Argentines”.

As part of the application process for the loans, applicants must provide proof that blue-prints have been officialised and that a construction company or independent worker has been contracted. Although it is not yet known how many companies will be used or available, or whether these will overlap, there is hope that the construction projects will be sourced from within Argentina as opposed to using companies from abroad. The plan is “to move the economy inwards and sustain it with an internal market,” as Lombardo states.

ProCreAr is more than just credits, housing and employment. It is also seen as an assertive action against the international free-market policies previously applied in the country. Although the programme is a movement inward and can be seen as part of a re-nationalisation process, the credit programme could also offer a sense of stability to Argentines. For some academics, it provides a chance for the nation to flourish from within.

Do Argentines think that ProCreAr will help solve the housing crisis? Click here to find out.

Housing has become a big news topic in Argentina since the announcement of the ProCreAr credit programme two weeks ago. The national government launched ProCreAr in order to finance mortgages and housing construction, and plans to fund the construction of 400,000 homes over the next four years. The amounts provided (up to $350,000 per family), interest rates, and monthly instalments, all vary according to a family’s monthly income.

Unlike the average, largely inaccessible bank loan, ProCreAr doesn’t ask for a minimum income.  The idea is that every Argentine be able to access a house of their own. The government also hopes to give the economy a boost by increasing production and employment through the construction incentivised by the programme.  During the official announcement of the loans last week, Deputy Economy Minister Axel Kicillof referred to a “housing crisis” in Argentina that ProCreAr aims to revert. It all sounds pretty good in theory, but the Indy headed to the streets to see what Argentines are really thinking – about this plan, but also about accessibility of housing in general. Here’s some of what we heard.

Portraits by Beatrice Murch

Horacio Asenjo, 70, Gardening Teacher, Lanús

My opinion is that if a young (married ) couple wants to buy their own house or apartment, both of them have to work and try to save as much as possible, because if not they can’t do it … For older people, like myself, we had different opportunities. You could build your own house or inherit your parents’ house, these things are more difficult now…It’s also hard to take out a loan because you have to meet a lot of requirements. You have to have a steady job, you have to have been working for a certain period of time. There is an incredible housing deficit here. The government is doing what it can. This government inherited a destroyed country, they’re doing what they can with measures like this one. They’re going to build 400,000 houses… but there is still going to be a lack of housing.

Lucas Cardozo, 32, Print Shop Worker, Pilar

For people who come from neighbouring countries like Paraguay or Bolivia it’s easier to access their own house, because they’re used to living in places that don’t have running water or gas. It’s very expensive to buy your own house, to buy a lot, to pay for the labour it takes to build a house. It’s also hard to sell properties right now, I’m trying to sell my house in the Province of Buenos Aires and it’s hard, because sales have been kind of stopped, because of the problem with dollar. You can’t take out loans in dollars and no one wants to sell houses in pesos, everyone wants to sell in dollars. Now, they came out with the new loans, and they give you $300,000, but it’s hard to buy anything with that money. I don’t know if the new program will make much of a difference because at first people will be able to buy more, but then they won’t be able to because they’ll have less of their salary at their disposal, because they’ll pay these instalments for many years and they’ll be losing a large part of their salary.

Norma Villafañe, 64, Housewife, Mendoza

We live in Mendoza. Luckily, we have our own house. I think the credit programme is a good thing, it’s good for young people. Hopefully it will work out and they’ll be able to carry out the plan like they say they will. It’s good that the government take care of these things. You have to invest in those kinds of things, and you have to make sure instalments are accessible. It’s very difficult to get a loan from a bank, but with this program people will be able to access housing, I think. There are many people living in very bad conditions. There are many slums, a lot of precarious housing, and there is more poverty lately. So it will be a very good thing, I think.

Juan Muñoz, 21, Graphic Design student, Colombia

I think that for a young person aspiring to have their own home it can get very complicated. I think that the new government programmes are a good option, but that there aren’t really many other options. It’s very difficult to get a loan from a bank because of the requirements. Obviously, for me it would be amazing to have my own house or apartment here, to avoid paying rent. With what you spend on a rent you could easily be paying for the instalments of a loan for a house, and then you have something of your own. I think it’s very necessary, and basic, but because of the way things are right now, it’s difficult for young people to have something of their own. I think the government’s program is a good measure, but we need more political programs of inclusion. Because even if the government loans don’t have so many requirements for income, for example, you still need to be earning a legal salary; people who don’t have a place to live or who live in precarious housing, they don’t have stable jobs, or if they do they’re paid under the table. Many things have to be regularised so that everything is a little more fair.

Citizen requests are flooding the website of the National Administration of Social Security (ANSES), as the Procrear credit program opens up to funding queries for new housing construction and mortgage loans.

The program primarily targets owners of land seeking to finance construction on their properties. Yesterday, however, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner decreed a new plan to address relocation and mortgage financing.

The government has published a list of 86 properties, totalling 1820 hectares throughout all provinces, which will be the sites of new housing developments. These include Rosario, Mendoza, La Plata, and Buenos Aires, each with areas set aside for new housing.

Following yesterday’s decree, query submissions on the ANSES web site have quadrupled, bringing in approximately 150 visits per second. Of the requests made so far, 56% have come from people who currently own land, while 43% have come from individuals without land, seeking mortgage loans or relocation.

The Procrear program is aimed at boosting economic activity, creating jobs, and providing solutions to the housing problems of low-income families. While acknowledging that there is a relatively large amount of credit available through major public and private banks, yesterday’s decree also cautioned “the conditions are highly restrictive for potential applicants of different income levels.”

Mortgage loans will be financed through a state-supported trust offering fixed interest rates between 2% and 14%, for plans up to 30 years. People of lower income will have access to smaller loans for which the monthly fee does not exceed 40% of their income.  The system will receive additional funding through bonds issued by the trust.

“[This project] is a safe investment for ANSES resources,” said ANSES chief Diego Bossio. “When a loan is designed with affordable terms, people pay.”

A constructed home beneath the underpass (Photo: Shooresh Fezoni)

Zigzagging between the streets of San Cristobal cars of volunteers pull up to each grimy cardboard fortress that line the walls of the underpass. Greeted with hugs and friendly chatter containers of food are passed into every hand. The stench of the litter strewn across the streets is ignored, as are the rats who scatter in all directions, a typical sight for the 15,000 ‘reported’ homeless people living in Buenos Aires.

With the demand for housing in the city tripling in the last three months, and job prospects for many remaining dire, the struggle for survival is a daily rhythm. But the dependable appearance of food-bearing volunteers help maintain a regular beat, and the growing network of charitable groups are providing a lifeline for the city’s homeless inhabitants.

Catering for needs

The work starts early, at times around 5am, for Cris Perrino. The founder of Ayudanos a Ayudar, a charitable group that work in the urban districts just south of the city centre, prepare and distribute vats of food to homeless people every other day. The mortality statistics of the homeless in the winter of 2008 were huge, and Cris decided she had to do something to help. Using a cart from a local supermarket she started taking food down to the people who live in the hidden corners of the district.

“At first it was difficult to talk with them about anything personal,” says Cris. “But over time I built up trust, a relationship with the people. This is really important as so many of these people are disconnected from their family and are left completely unsupported.”

Cris, Lucila and Yago preparing food (Photo: Shooresh Fezoni)

Over the last two years Cris’s daily altruistic tasks have become a foundation which have close to 4,000 followers. Four days per week, and every day during the winter months, a handful of volunteers meet at Cris’s apartment in San Cristobal. Mixing together a huge tub of pasta salad, the set menu on the day I meet them, Cris tells me that they now get food donated from individuals and local businesses. “We make salads, give drinks, and try to provide healthy food,” she says.

Collecting together anything else the people may need the group accept donations of clothes, shoes, toys and sanitary products. But Cris says it’s more than just a matter of aiding everyday survival. Volunteers of the group, graphic designers Yago Romero and Lucila Gutierrez, recount the psychological traumas the homeless people encounter and their need to discuss their problems with someone. Although their group consists of a psychologist and a doctor, they feel it is not enough. “It is impossible to see 100% of the people, and I want to be able to listen to all of the stories,” Cris laments.

A neglected population

Groups such as this are imperative for the homeless. “These people are phantoms in the night,” Cris states. “Without us going and talking to them they would feel completely excluded by everyone.” The homeless do appear to be the forgotten population of Buenos Aires, hard to believe considering they are visible in amongst the doorways and piles of cardboard on most of the streets in the city.

One surprising location where their state of neglect is particularly apparent is the beautiful tree lined plaza overlooked by the nation’s Congress building. Home to an elaborate fountain and a children’s fair, the plaza also currently houses 35 people, as reported by the Buenos Aires city government. Throughout the section of the square that remains public are several ‘homes’ constructed from thick cardboard, wood, and old furniture sourced from the surrounding streets. To the right hand side of the plaza live a family of four where, seated around the table in the centre, they eat their foraged or donated lunch under the midday sun.

Governmental assistance?

Food left out for sleeping inhabitants (Photo: Shooresh Fezoni)

Attempts made by the local government to house this street population lack necessary funds and structure. According to Councillor Laura García Tuñón there are only 1,700 beds in the city’s public refuges. “People queue up in the early evening to spend the night and have to leave by seven in the morning,” she stated in a Doctors of the World report last year. “This is clearly insufficient to lodge all the homeless”. In the same presentation García Tuñón commented that in 2009, 30,000 people were evicted from occupied housing with little money put aside to help develop more social housing projects.

What few policies exist are not well thought through or executed. The city government provides subsidies enabling a small portion of the homeless to stay in designated hotels. But Yago and Lucila retell the story of a family who took up this opportunity with unfortunate consequences: leaving their cartonero cart in the street, their sole source of pitiful income, they came back the following morning to find it had been stolen.

Stories also fly around about hotel owners pocketing the money, which is given to them in a lump sum, and then evict the guests when it suits them.

In the same illogical way there are certain legal documents available that entitle unemployed parents to child support of USD $38 provided the children attend school and have all necessary vaccinations. However, with no fixed address this becomes an impossibility. Franco, a homeless single father of three, has managed to obtain a document that guarantees that his children have basic social care. He keeps this on him at all times, guarding it as one of his most precious possessions. His situation is unrelenting: “we have to move on all the time or we will be robbed,” he states, nodding in grim certainty. “There is nowhere we can go that will keep us safe.”

Helping to help themselves

The key issue is ending this trapping cycle. Such obstacles preventing those on the streets from being able to move out of the perpetual state of homelessness – no address, no documentation, no clean clothes – makes it an ongoing battle to change their situation. Such labyrinth-like trials are nothing new and yet still governments world-wide struggle to find social solutions.

Cris envisions providing more than just a way of coping with life of the streets. Hopeful that the mentality in Buenos Aires is changing she notes that there are lots of individuals working on small-scale projects. “We are trying to form a network between all the groups that work in different districts of the city,” she says. Her more ambitious goal is to eventually provide a space where people will be able to reclaim their lives by using their skills in order to shift themselves out of their situation. “We want to find a place which we can open up to the people, where they can take classes and run cooperatives,” she says, discussing her hopes for the future. “We all want to help, we just need to find a way to do so.”

For more information about Ayudanos a Ayudar see their facebook page [http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=130466873649721].

Youth from the area attack a Prefectura truck (Photo: Kate Sedgwick)

Over five thousand settlers, whose occupation of Parque Indoamericano lead to scenes of violence and unrest in Villa Soldati, have now deserted their camps.

The mass exodus, completed yesterday morning, came after an agreement reached between the city and federal government to create more social housing.

Clashes between the people trying to find housing in the area in the south of Buenos Aires, neighbours and police forces left three people dead and a fourth to be confirmed.

This localised incident highlights a desperate lack of investment in social housing and overcrowding across the city.

Timeline of Troubles

Settlers first started moving into the park land, which is owned by Corporación Sur, on Sunday 5th December. Two days later, federal and metropolitan police attempted to evacuate 200 settlers by force following a court ruling and by the end of the day two people had been killed in the clashes.

The Federal police have denied their culpability in the deaths, saying that they only fired rubber bullets.

President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner spoke out calling for an end to the violence. Aníbal Fernández, head of the national government cabinet, said: “This government does not accept that any member of the security forces can raise a fist against someone that is protesting.”

On Wednesday police forces around the park were overwhelmed as thousands more settlers set up tents and shacks leading to widespread discontent among local residents.

Residents gather by highway (Photo: Kate Sedgwick)

By Thursday local residents had taken to the streets, angry about the vacillations of the city and national governments and afraid that the settlers would stay there, hemming them in with another villa - there are already three in and around the neighbourhood.

On Friday, with more people settling on the land, security forces in absentia and public bickering between Mauricio Macri, mayor of Buenos Aires, and the president’s administration – residents marched into the park vowing to evict the settlers themselves.

With a minimal police presence scenes soon got out of control. Residents claim that their protest was infiltrated by barrabravas – violent hooligans affiliated to certain football clubs, including Club Atlético de Huracán.

The Bolivian community in Buenos Aires claims that a fourth person was killed in the violence. Witnesses say that the ambulance carrying him away was overwhelmed by violent crowds who dragged him outside and shot him dead. These allegations have not been confirmed by the authorities.

While area youth shoot fireworks and throw rocks at the Prefectura, they fire tear gas to disperse them (Photo: Kate Sedgwick)

With events spiralling out of control police moved back into the area on the weekend, creating a human barrier with riot shields across the Escalada and Castañares, and eventually sealing off the park.

Sebastian, a resident who grew up in the neighbourhood, described the scenes, with violent youths throwing rocks and missiles at police who retaliated with tear gas and water cannons.

He says that what started as a peaceful protest was overrun with violent packs of youths that weren’t from the neighbourhood. “They were sent there by someone – that’s what everyone thinks – maybe a political group. We aren’t stupid, something  strange was going on.”

The suspicion was echoed on a national level, with President Fernández de Kirchner saying that the violent clashes in the south of the city “didn’t just get out of hand”; they were “sponsored by someone”.

The following day a degree of calm was restored to the area, with police blocking off access to the park and preventing further clashes. A census was taken to record details of the settlers. As water, chemical toilets and food was brought to the park, local residents began gathering to voice their unhappiness.

Residents’ Reaction

It is understood that the people occupying the park initially came to Villa 20 from the provinces and suburbs of Buenos Aires, having paid money to groups who promised them accommodation in the city. Upon arrival people living in the villa turned them away and consequently they moved to the parkland nearby.

Alejandro, who has been living in Villa Soldati for over 20 years, spoke from a residents’ meeting at the bottom of Escalada on Tuesday: “What they’re demanding is legitimate but it isn’t legal. It’s illegal because this is public land. Both the national and city government have abandoned us and we, the residents, are trying to do what we can.

“Every day we’re meeting here between 7pm and 9pm – people are coming together to stop people just settling wherever they like. We don’t have a political agenda – we’re just families that live here,” he said.

Social Housing Crisis

According to Buenos Aires Sin Techo (Homeless Buenos Aires), a report published earlier this year by the Comisión de Vivienda de la Legislatura de la Ciudad, there are over 100,000 suitable buildings standing empty in the city.

Buenos Aires Homeless (Photo: Captain Victor)

Despite this, some 12,000 people live in 150 asentamientos (unofficial settlements), 170,000 live in 16 villas and 110,000 in unsafe buildings. According to the report, there are also thousands living in homeless shelters, and hostels, as well as the untold numbers who sleep on the pavements.

One of Macri’s election campaign pledges dealt with the issue of social housing – he pledged 1,600 new homes in Villa 20 alone, according to Alejandro Salvatierra, a delegate from Villa 15.

There is a lot of frustration amongst citizens about the reality of evicting people from overcrowded housing without counterbalancing it with investment in social housing to solve the shortage.

Macri’s response has been that there is no money to build houses. But Sebastian speaks for a lot of people when he says that the mayor wasted budget money on gimmicks like the metropolitan police force instead of his promises about more social housing.

“The metropolitan police is completely useless – it was the expensive whim of a capricious little rich boy who wanted a police force for other rich people, we never see them around here. People started throwing stones at them and they fled – I feel sorry for them,” he said.

City-National Government Dynamic

Although Macri has taken the brunt of the blame for the violence, the inability of the city and national governments – whose policies are often polar opposites – to work together has made the handling of this crisis even more difficult.

After a series of meetings, public mud-slinging, letters and name-calling, emergency talks were held on Friday night as scenes in Villa Soldati turned ugly. Macri met with Aníbal Fernández – the head of the cabinet – and representatives from the neighbourhood. The cabinet chief later said that the national government had agreed to act as a “guarantor” in negotiations with the settlers.

Juan Carlos, a nearby resident said that while the national and city governments are squabbling publicly, the residents – who he says started a peaceful protest and then got caught up in the violence – are in the middle.

“At this moment individual politics is irrelevant, we all need to work out as citizens of this city how we are going to resolve this… Everyone is doing what they can for now because the state isn’t here. At the moment we feel abandoned,” he said.

Macri has been publicly accused of xenophobia by the Bolivian embassy and Fernández following a statement he made blaming the national government’s immigration policy for the housing crisis in the city in an attempt to shirk blame.

“It seems that Buenos Aires has to look after all of the neighbouring countries and this is unfeasible. Every day between 100 and 200 people arrive in the city and we don’t know who they are, brought here by delinquency and drug trafficking,” said Macri at a press conference.

“The deaths have nothing to do with the evictions in the city – it’s because of insecurity and immigration,” he added.

An embassy spokesman said: “Macri’s comments are creating a climate of xenophobia against the Bolivian community – stigmatising those who are supporting the development and the economy of Argentina.” His comments were echoed by Hebe de Bonafini, leader of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, and other human rights organisations.

Prospects

While the park has been evacuated after the agreement reached between the city and national governments, many of the key points of the accord have yet to be defined.

The city government has been given 120 days to present a plan to the national government, and a working table has been set up between various organisations including Banco de la Ciudad. It has been stated that one of the prerequisites to apply for any housing will be two years of residency in the capital, and both parties have emphasized that the housing will not necessarily go to those who took the park, but to those who are most in need. Further details have yet to be made public.

Many more eyes will now be watching to see if the governments can fulfill their promises to address the social housing crisis. But with an election year around the corner, the suspicion remains that the handling of the situation was an attempt for both sides to gain political points off one another. But with a toll of three – or possibly four – deaths and staunch criticism off residents in much of the south of the city for their handling of the situation, it seems like there have been no winners over the past two weeks.

Photo courtesy of Madre Tierra

Villa in the province of Buenos Aires that Madre Tierra is helping build up.

The urban conurbation of Gran Buenos Aires is home to a third of Argentina’s population, with some 13 million citizens living in the sprawling metropolis. A significant proportion of these currently have limited or no access to formal housing.

They live either on the streets of Buenos Aires or in informal shanty towns, known as villas miserias. There are over 1,000 villas and asentamientos in the conurbation, housing nearly 700,000 citizens according to recent estimates. This is a phenomenon that has worsened in the last 20 years, and despite government and NGO efforts continues to be a serious problem for millions of inhabitants.

Photo by Beatrice Murch

Ana Pastor, coordinator of Madre Tierra explains the situation.

A Question of Land?

For many observers the primary cause of this housing crisis is the ever-growing price of land in Buenos Aires, as well as government unwillingness to regulate this market.

Cristina Cravino is a professor at the Universidad Nacional General Sarmiento, and specialises in housing issues. She argues that this is an issue that has become more serious in recent years:  “In the middle of the 1990s emerged greater problems with housing, due to the pegging of the peso to the dollar. This increased greatly the price of land, renting and housing in urban Buenos Aires.”

The result was a growing number of families who, unable to buy their own property and aware of the lack of options, were forced to move into informal settlements. This trend was exacerbated by rise in poverty provoked by the economic crisis of 2001.

Despite the recent economic recovery nothing has changed regarding the affordability of housing for working and middle-class residents. For Ana Pastor, coordinator for church-linked NGO Madre Tierra, a fundamental fault of the system is that it serves big businesses and property speculators over regular citizens. A particular contention is that of the phenomenon of “barrios privados”: gated communities in the outskirts of Buenos Aires which give well-off porteños and expats a place to spend the weekend or escape the city. This has raised land prices in areas previously affordable to working people.

Ms Pastor elaborates on this crisis: “barrios privados today cover an area double the size of Buenos Aires city. However, in these neighbourhoods live just 5.5% of the population of the capital. We are in a situation of injustice and inequality that is exploding.”

Photo courtesy of Madre Tierra

Proud father holding his baby at his home helped by Madre Tierra.

Just the Bare Necessities:

After being established, informal settlements will invariably lack basic services, such as water, electricity and sewage systems. Many long-term villa inhabitants however continue to have no access to these necessities. There are no social programs in place to ensure basic services reach all; access requires money to pay for installation. Prof. Cravino believes the issue is one of inequality. While the vast majority of dwellings in the capital receive these facilities, in Gran Buenos Aires as a whole “The majority (of citizens) do not have sewage facilities, and half do not have running water.”

Often this means that the poorest citizens pay more for services than wealthy homeowners. Luis Basualdo, representative of the micro-credit NGO Fundación Pro Vivienda Social (FPVS), explains that in areas where there is no mainline gas available, residents pay far more to buy bottles, which need to be replaced regularly and are a potential hazard in confined spaces.

An even more pressing issue is that of residents’ health. The close proximity of wells not dug deeply enough into the soil and informal cesspits for waste disposal can easily contaminate drinking water, leading to such diseases as Typhus which in the West are closer associated with the Victorian era.

Photo courtesy of Madre Tierra

Building up a brick home in the province.

Photo by Ellen Knuti

House under construction with FPVS loan.

What is to Be Done?

In the last ten years, with the ascension of the Kirchner governments and a step away from unrestrained free-market worship, the issue of social housing is finally on the agenda. There are programmes in place that attend to a wider housing plan, such as working to “regularise” informal housing, recognise their existence and provide wider services such as public health and education.

These programmes however have achieved limited success, and the lack of continuity in Argentine politics means that they could easily be eliminated by a successor in a matter of years. Another problem is the recognition of the areas: Prof. Cravino explains that “There are almost 1000 villas and asentamientos in Gran Buenos Aires, and the government intervenes in about 70. Many are very small, and intervention tends to take place only in the biggest and most historic.”

In the absence of concerted government policies, much of the onus has been placed on NGOs to fill the breach. The aid given varies, but the general target is to improve living standards within the villas, and help convert them into planned, permanent neighbourhoods.

Madre Tierra works in Zona Oeste of the conurbation, covering peripheral districts such as Morón, Moreno and Hurlingham. These areas are considered middle-class, but as Pastor pointed out they “are middle-class districts in their centres, while in the peripheries, where they cross streams or train tracks or in areas not fit for market use, you find villas housing working class families.”

The organisation has been aiding inhabitants of informal housing since 1986. Aid is given through the provision of plots of land, either donated or purchased by benefactors. The deeds are given to families to build their own houses, while slowly repaying the loans. This circumvents the problem of rising land prices, although a project like this can clearly only be realised on a small scale. The group also helps villa residents to pressure local authorities into recognising their neighbourhoods, and providing appropriate services.

FPVS on the other hand work more indirectly to tackle sub-standard housing. They lend micro-credit loans to neighbourhood ‘solidarity groups’ in order to improve their houses, as well as install and pay for utilities and services in the barrio. Basualdo emphasised the solidarity aspect of the loans, asserting that “if one neighbour cannot pay one month, the other participants in the project can help and this way they will not miss repayments.”

Photo by Ellen Knuti

Signage for FPVS in Mayor del Pino.

To see Micro Credito Solidario in practice we visited Mayor del Pino, a former villa in Moreno now partly regularised, housing 1,300 families. The different stages of development were plain; neat brick houses with gardens and fences were next to one-roomed tin huts and piles of scrap metal. It was explained to me that “whereas in many countries you build your house and then move onto the land, in Argentina it is the reverse. You move onto the land, and then you start to build your dream home no matter how long it takes”.

Mayor del Pino resident Maxíma Ibañez was a recipient of an FPVS loan. Looking around her cottage, fully furnished with a television in the corner and a ceiling fan beating off the midday heat, it was hard to believe her assurances that previously it had looked no different from other hastily-constructed casillas throughout Buenos Aires. Ms Ibañez had nothing but praise for the program, and was adamant that the sharing of debt does not allow some to take advantage of their neighbours.

What the Future Holds:

Although NGOs and housing aid organisations can do vital work, it is no substitute for a concerted government drive to regulate the housing market and provide affordable housing. Agricultural policies and changing climate conditions continue to force families from interior provinces into Gran Buenos Aires; villas are forming and growing constantly with this influx.

Cravino sees no rapid end to the crisis: “I think that its going to be very similar to now. The tendency to build villas, asentamientos and other forms of informal housing will continue to grow. There is no sign or signal that suggests the opposite. I don’t think, with all that is happening that at the moment it can be reversed.”

The deadline has passed for non-indigenous residents to leave a reservation in the northern region of Roramia in Brazil.

A Supreme Court ruling in March declared that the area should remain solely for the use of the 20,000 indigenous people currently residing there. Around 30 other families had been living there and working as rice farmers and farm workers.

The non-indigenous families who refused to leave will now be met by the 300 police and soldiers entering the area with the purpose of removing them from the 1.7 million hectare reservation. Authorities say force will only be used against any remaining rice producers and farm workers if they are met with violent resistance.

Some former residents have been criticised for destroying crops and property as they left.

The 30 families say they are victims of “legalised robbery” and have lost their homes and jobs within less than two months. The government maintains they will be properly compensated.

The decision to evict the residents was seen as a historic victory for the indigenous communities in both South America and Brazil. It has set an important precedent for future court cases and was very well received by the indigenous community in Roramia.

The operation was surrounded in controversy as the governor of Roramia, Jose de Anchieta Jr, was accused of racism when the proceedings began. He also allegedly ignored the rights of the indigenous communities in the region.

Mr De Anchieta Jr admitted later that the government had not previously provided the people on the reservation with sufficient local resources. He promised to rectify this situation but warned that the operation to ensure the Supreme Court ruling has been obeyed could take some days to complete.