The dictatorship period between 1973 and 1990 corresponded to the rise of a new model of housing politics (centred on the instrument of subsidy to the demand complemented by saving and credit on the part of the beneficiaries). Immersed in the political framework of an authoritarian regime, this constituted a break with the democratic tradition of Chile, and from a social and economic point of view introduced fundamental changes in the development model and in state organization because of the neoliberal economic orientation and reorganization plan of the public policies.
In the housing institutions we should point out some changes produced in the first years of the dictatorship that created the frame within which later housing efforts were to develop.
In 1976 the Law Decree 1305 was established that would set both the regional SEREMI23 and a metropolitan one with the mission to establish national housing politics for each region and set all the planning, programming, evaluation, control and promotion activities under the instructions of the MINVU. The four corporations (CORVI, CORMI, CORABITH and COU) merged in the National Service of Housing and Urbanism (SERVIU) with a local office in each of the new 13 regions24.
At the end of the seventies, the housing policies assumed in Chile can be divided into three organizing points. First, the State concentrated its efforts on the families with limited access to private sources of financing. The diagnoses claimed that the difficulties of the market in satisfying the housing needs of the poorest families were due to their low purchasing power. The solution would be raise the purchasing power of the family by state action using direct financial subsidies, while private banks would offer supplementary funding. The middle class sector as well as the higher class was expected to look for funding from private banks. The construction of houses was to be completely in the hands of the private sector, with the state acting only as facilitator25.
The second component was a new urban policy that liberated the land market, starting in 1979. This was introduced under the assumption that it would bring down
23 SEREMI are the Regional Ministerial Secretaries, institutions that represent each ministry in the different regions of the country.
24 The regionalization process that resulted in the current political and administrative division of Chile began in 1974 and concluded in 1976. The country was divided into 12 regions plus a metropolitan area.
In 2007 two new regions were added, completing the 15 regions that compose the country today.
25 Rojas, E. (1999). El largo camino hacia la reforma del sector vivienda. Lecciones de la experiencia chilena. Banco Interamericano del Desarrollo. Departamento de Desarrollo Sostenible. Washington D.C.
p. 103
the value of the houses due to the lower cost of the sites. The normative rule was that the use of land was made more flexible to allow urban growth to work according to the tendencies of the market26.
Finally the third component appeared within a special context. Because these housing and urban policies were started during a period of low economic growth, the government had the idea that the construction of new housing would be a good way to reactivate the economy. So it was decided to provide subsidies only for buying new houses, which did not include making any effort to support the selling, remodelling or improvement of old ones.
Not so long after the starting point of this new policy in housing, the military government had to assume a more active role because private constructors and banks failed to develop an interest in building or financing economical social housing. The MINVU started to hire private constructors directly to take responsibility for the construction of low cost houses to be distributed to the beneficiaries enrolled in a national list.
Another of the major reforms of the period was the change in the subsidies to supply the deficit. This new system supposed that each person was directly responsible for his own housing solution. To gain the subsidies given to each beneficiary by the state, the recipients also needed to prove an initial savings effort, which in addition to the mortgage asked from private banks, would complete the value of the house.
26 Rojas, E. (1999). El largo camino hacia la reforma del sector vivienda. Lecciones de la experiencia chilena. Banco Interamericano del Desarrollo. Departamento de Desarrollo Sostenible. Washington D.C.
p. 98
The new housing programmes based on the scheme of subsidies to supply the demand were growing and perfected during the eighties. We can name the Programme of Housing Subsidy (1978), the Unified Subsidy (1984), and the Special Programme for Workers (1985); also the Rural Subsidy (1986) and the Basic Housing Programme, which were created to attend directly to the marginal housing deficit27.
There is agreement that the systems of access to housing developed in Chile during the military dictatorship were innovative when seen from an international level, because they proved that it was possible in a developing country to apply programmes already introduced in industrialized countries: for example the direct subsidy to supply demand, and the almost inexistent participation of the State in the construction of houses. However, the validity of the model is immediately questioned if we review the numbers of the housing deficit: more than 800,000 houses were still missing out of a total of 2,500,000 houses needed in the country. During the years of the dictatorship the number of houses built under the State programmes was 45,000 units for year, but the number of families constituted by year was 90,000. The number of built houses was a little superior to that achieved under the government of Alessandri, but much lower than under the governments of Frei Montalva and Allende. We should point out that despite the low numbers in that period, the system of subsidies institutionalized in this administration would become the basis for achieving the important qualitative progress in housing coverage attempted in the 1990s28.
From an economic and social point of view, this period was relevant because it started the evolution of the housing idea in Chile: moving from a social right, an obligatory function of the State, to the concept of a subsidiary State immersed in a free market economy. The MINVU claimed: “The house is a right that is acquired with effort
27 MINVU op. cit., p. 74
28 Rojas, E. (1999). El largo camino hacia la reforma del sector vivienda. Lecciones de la experiencia chilena. Banco Interamericano del Desarrollo. Departamento de Desarrollo Sostenible. Washington D.C.
p. 113
and savings in which the families and the State share responsibility”29. This policy was based on the idea of promoting private initiative, assuming that this economic sector would be a protagonist of responsibility in the housing problem. The politics of the dictatorship said that the State would ensure that everyone had expeditious channels of access to a housing solution according to their economic characteristics. The systems of assignation of subsidies were improved, standing out in the CAS file30 and other selection systems for beneficiaries with a good technical support basis.
The focused programmes developed in these years were centred on the social groups in extreme poverty. The state created the Programme of Basic Housing and the Programme of Neighbourhood Improvement, this last one achieving the best results in the slum neighbourhoods’ sanitation problems.
The most frequent architectural typology used in the Programme of Basic Housing was the semi-detached house on two floors with a continuous facade across two levels. Another characteristic was the construction, especially in Santiago, of large-scale housing projects with an average of 310 houses each, a situation that generated a negative urban impact in the city31.
So, from this moment on in the history of social housing in Chile, a typology can be recognised that became a synonym of state action in the eighties, with variations in subsequent decades. The group of state houses "Colina Norte" (see image 4.10) is an
29 Ibid. p.117
30 The CAS file appeared in 1979 with the creation of the “Comités de Asistencia Social” (CAS). These Welfare Committees worked at a community level and had the responsibility to implement the social programmes of the State. The CAS file was born because of the need for a standardized and unique instrument to target the neediest social groups in order to focus the State programmes on them. In 1980 the CAS file first version was made: with the information gathered it was possible to classify families into 5 levels or rates of poverty, the first three reflecting the most severe situations of poverty.
31 The urban impact of the housing policies is one of the questioned areas. During this period a large-scale urban segregation appeared and was increased with the eradication of the slum neighbourhoods from the central and east areas of the city of Santiago and relocation of the people in social housing projects on the periphery of the city under the pretext of the lower price of the land, without considering any urban or public transport planning. It is important to mention that the politics of liberalization of the land market of 1979, eliminating the urban limit, never achieved the function of reducing the value of the sites, but the opposite was observed - an increase in the value of the sites.
example of social housing on two levels, where the lower of the areas is given over to living-dining-kitchen spaces along with a bathroom, leaving two rooms on the upper level. Narrow facade blocks are developed facing the interior of the block with an elongated patio.
Through a plebiscite of 1989, the Chilean population decided that they did not want the dictator Augusto Pinochet to continue in office for another 8 years. Accepting defeat at the polls, the military government called for general elections to select a new democratic president and a National Congress after 17 years of closure of this democratic institution. As expected, the opposition to Pinochet was grouped in the centre-left Coalition of Parties for Democracy, which took the victory, and Patricio Aylwin Azocar assumed the presidency of Chile in 1990 for a 4 year term. This government initiated a period of 20 years of centre-left governments.