Chile is living complex times regarding housing, not only in relation to buying, but also in access to rent. To this respect, the scholar from the School of Architecture and Design at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Adriana Marín, together with Francisca Bogolasky from the School of Government at the Universidad de Chile, carried out a pioneer study regarding the evolution of rentals and the advance of this business in social housing in La Pintana neighborhood.
The information was included in the book “Insurgent Urbanism in the Americas”, which was presented by one of its authors and chilean scholars at the PUCV auditorium in Santiago.
In the chilean chapter called “Opportunities and challenges in home rentals in Chile and Latin America: an exploration between local initiatives and political responses”, scholars Marín and Bogolasky delved into a market that used to be inexistent: the rent of social housing”.
The reasons for the phenomenon are related to the lack of public policy in housing matters, the increase of housing prices and the informal expansion in the area, which translates into an explosive increase in rental prices.
Adriana Marín explained that “we have been used to the dream of owning property and talking about renting can be a little dangerous politically, but I think it is a conversation we must have”. In addition, she indicated that “what we need is a policy, a national long-term rationale because what we see is a system that is not growing, we don’t see rent prices decreasing but constantly increasing”.
On the other hand, the analysis from Francisca Bogolasky is directed towards public policy, with which she intends to explain possible alternatives to this problem. “There are no rental policies yet in Chile, no landlord organizations and the same occurs in the majority of the cases of Latin America”. She also added that “in general, in Chile and Latin America, public policy is more focused on housing through owning property. But evidence and data have also shown the limitations of concentrating exclusively on this”.
Insurgent Urbanism in Latin America
The concept of insurgent urbanism refers to the idea of allowing differences and not concentrating on the conflict when building cities. Urbanism and Design require coming to agreements and problems occur when these agreements are not achieved.
The ideas are portrayed in the book written by Christine Stiphany and Edna Ely- Ledesma, who carried out research in different cities in Latin America to understand the roots of the problems, inequalities and how they have evolved throughout time, creating resistance to the already installed Urban Development models.
In the words of one of its authors, architect and director of the Design Laboratory for Resilient Surroundings at the University of Buffalo, Christine Stiphany, one of the unique things about insurgence is that it is based on the idea of allowing differences, not necessarily conflict. Urbanism and Design are often wanting to reach consensus, to have everyone agree”.
She also referred to rentals which “used to be something very small. It was a stepping stone. However, we can now start thinking about it as an opportunity to reflect about where and how people live in cities because it is very dynamic”.
By Guillermo Franchino
Strategic Communications Department
