CHAPTER 2
HOUSING IN CHILE (1960s- PRESENT) By the beginning of the 60s there were at least twenty-eight institutions dependent on eight ministries involved in housing and urbanisation. To address this situation, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (MINVU) was created, which together with the Housing Corporation (CORVI) and the Housing Services Corporation (CORHABIT), made up the Urban Improvement Corporation (CORMU). A company Autonomous State, one of whose main functions was to improve and renovate the deteriorated areas of cities, through rehabilitation and urban development programs. Throughout the history of its public housing programs, the Chilean government has fought against the housing deficit and provided support for low income families. Responding to a more socially driven political agenda, the main measure taken by the government in the 1960s was the establishment of the Ministry of Housing and Urbanism (República de Chile, 1956). The government founded a Ministry for Housing and Urbanism (MINVU) to set policy and manage public funds. It promoted a cultural of saving in low-income households through the Popular Savings Program (PAP), and the establishment of saving and Loans Associations (S&L). Public funds were allocated to the Ministry of Housing and Urbanism to build low-cost houses that were sold to low-income households.
Within Eduardo Frei Montalva’s term in charge from 1965-70, there was real intent to reduce the housing deficit, which was mirrored from a global perspective, in countries of the global north like the US and UK. In Chile “a global six-year plan was designed to construct 360,000 dwellings, of which 60% would be destined for the lower-income sectors” (Kusnetzoff 1987: 159). Housing programs would incorporate schools, health centres, sports fields, among other spaces. It was considered that the solution of the housing problem required the participation of the beneficiary families. The Allende administration aimed to “add an ambitious emergency plan for the year 1971, with the goal of beginning the construction of 80,000 dwellings that year.” (Kusnetzoff, J. 1987: 161). A series of other policies were initiated to favour the popular sector. Kusnetzoff, J. (1987) summarises Allendes term as one that “showed a greater capacity to deal with the accumulated lack of housing, with the institutional structure and existing resources.”
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