This is a CTP of initiative: ICA/Fucvam (Uruguay)
The Co-housing Act represents for FUCVAM a significant CTP. This process generated changes in it trajectory and very important learnings. The enactment of the National Housing Act is clearly a CTP in the FUCVAM trajectory. This is justified on two levels: in first place, because it was the product of struggle and recognition of the organization of the first housing cooperatives in Uruguay; secondly, because it constitutes a uniquely in Latin America experience it allows the possibility of collective ownership of land and housing. In this process, the law involved the creation of an entire institutional corps. The Uruguayan Chamber of Representatives enacted Law No. 13,728 on December 17, 1968. In addition to creating the legal framework, that recognizes the right of every family to a home, regardless of their economic status. Law was the first serious initiative by the State in social housing policy and has the virtue of understanding the construction of housing as an essential of the national economic effort. This is because, the Article 3 of the 13,728 Act recognized the need for a planned housing policy that should be contemplated in the plans of socio-economic development of the country. The law was inspired by the principles of the Inter-American Economic and Social Council (CIES, for its acronym in Spanish), formulated at the Tenth Inter-American Conference held in Caracas fourteen years before approving it. To verify this assertion can compare the texts of 13,728 Act and the principles approved by CIES in 1954. The Act is an accumulation of concepts that provide to the civil servants, the guidelines for to control the policies. For example, the law established the concept of "adequate housing". For the first time in the country's history, the state talk about the type of housing that should be built. It states that "adequate housing" should be understood as, "one housing that meets the minimum as defined in Article 18 and having the number of bedrooms required according to family composition" (Article No. 12 of the Act). Finally, the Article 18 strictly defines the technical aspects of housing construction in the country." The law states that all loans granted in order to finance housing, demand full repayment of the loan at its updated value. To that end, the government created the Adjustable Unit (UR, for its acronym in Spanish), whose initial value is adjusted annually according to the variation recorded in the average wage index prepared by the Executive Branch. All values are expressed in indexed values.
In mid-June 1968 was created the housing cooperative, Co-operative Housing New Hope "COVINE 1" (for its acronym in Spanish). In turn, it developed three experiences in Mala Island, Fray Bentos and Salto, with cooperatives of different origins: Railway Union, Municipal Union and Milk Workers Union, respectively. Were pilot schemes before the national housing Act, funded with an Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) loan, through the National Institute of Housing (which was at that time, which coordinated the housing public system in the country). The Act established an institutional structure to carry out the objectives. Formalized through the National Housing Authority (DINAVI, for its acronym in Spanish), and the Mortgager Uruguayan Bank (Banco Hipotecario del Uruguay, BHU, for its acronym in Spanish) as the only financial institution to promote the National Institute of Housing (INV for its acronym in Spanish), as the central organ of housing production by the public system. Actually, is the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment exercise DINAVI’s and INVE’s functions. Along with these policies, the government created the conditions for the establishment of housing policy, funded by the National Housing Fund (FNV, for its acronym in Spanish), to provide economic capital for housing construction were created. The Act launched a system savings in charge of all the productive forces of the country to form resources for a permanent Fund for the co-housing construction. Another key actor in the enactment of the Law was the Chamber of Construction. In a context of economic protection, encouragement of the domestic market, and Keynesian ideas influence, the construction companies took the opportunity to pressure the government and mobilize the Law as fostering job creation. Also important was the Christian Democratic party, in that moment, the most progressive and closer to popular movement. They are those that incorporate the chapter 10, dedicated exclusively to cooperative housing.
Since the mid-1960s, in the context of a military government, these movements joined in the common interest of social housing. Hence, the first article of the Law guarantees access to housing as a right: Article 1- Every family, irrespective of their economic resources, you must have access to adequate housing that meets the minimum defined in this law. The State have a significant role to create the conditions for the effective implementation of that right. "The content of the Law provide a device homebuilding to promote meticulously arranging the regulation of cases and how their performance. In this regard, they can benefit from credit companies and private developers that build housing for sale; individuals to build housing for themselves, or for others.” However, as the Act responded to the action of housing cooperatives that were beginning to form in Uruguay, the law is especially oriented to the action of cooperatives of build by mutual aid, releasing tax burdens and commissions of social funds with union solidarity contribution. In this sense, is important noted with special attention an Act to co-housing by the system of mutual aid, stoking this type of construction, through the exemption of tax contributions and benefit of the construction costs. The Act regulates the activity of the Institutes of Technical Assistance (IAT, for its acronym in Spanish), key agencies for the autonomous operation of housing cooperatives for mutual aid. The IAT provide the necessary assistance to cooperatives in the architectural, legal, financial, economic, social, and cooperative levels. Last, but not least, an important event related to the enactment of the Housing Act was, in 1970 and under the support of regulation, the creation of the Uruguayan Federation of Housing Cooperatives Mutual Aid –FUCVAM-.
In the 1960s, there was a struggle between a more politicized european mainstream left, with the cooperative movement, more self-managed and delinked from political parties. Part of the debate at the time was about the kind of cooperatives to create, especially within all sectors of the left. The main argument of popular organizations had three points: 1- was that the cooperatives deviated the militants from the party activities; 2- stated that workers not should build their own homes but win enough money to buy them, otherwise it was a form of self-exploitation; 3- self-build houses implied the non-occupation of construction workers, which many cooperatives were part. The cooperative movement had an intense debate before the enactment of the Housing Act. In the mid-1960s, Uruguay, as all Latin America, was crossed by the activism of students and workers. Faced with a rightist government, the popular sectors are permanently mobilized and the government often responded with repression. For the state, the Act was a strategy for demobilize the cooperative movement. After the enactment of the Law, the government issued new laws they modified some of its articles in particular, but without affecting the overall structure. The law is composed of a long text with fourteen chapters and 212 articles in which detailed the aspects for regulate the activity. The regulations associated with the law, it collected the concerns existing at that moment, of the public and private sectors. In its general principles, it defines the role of the state as promoter of co-housing build and administrator of the resources allocated to achieve the objectives that the law arises. After passage the Act, followed the establishment of numerous housing cooperatives throughout Uruguay, especially in Montevideo, capital of the country with two thirds of the total population.
Since 1966, they occurred in Uruguay a series of events that were leading to the conceptual framework for Housing Act. In a context of economic growth in the region, while concentrated sectors benefited from the process, the popular sectors did not have access to housing.
This was perceived by social organizations, including cooperatives, as a time of change. The social mobilization also allowed anticipating the possibility of transforming housing policies, moving towards the promotion of cooperative housing. Actually, there was no concrete anticipation of the outcome of the process because the government did not responded in general to social demands.
However, different social groups that in that time were linked to the cooperative movement began increasingly to develop activities to promote social housing as a right. At the same time, the movement created three cooperatives within Uruguay that were forerunners of the Federation, created in 1970.
The cooperative movement has reached many accomplishments in his trajectory. Since its inception in the early consumer cooperatives, to today with work , production and housing co-operatives; from the cooperatives to National Federations incorporated new criteria but did not change their social, equitable and solidarity objectives that created. However, these objectives continue to be transformative benefits only for its members and not for all society. In that, the co-operative movement he differed from the more engaged movements that fighting for the society transformation.
"The strategic debate was already raised historically and summarized in defining where they can grow up cooperatives as organizations without putting into question the general interest of the whole society. Without ignoring this contradiction that is a new version of contradiction individual-society, is possible in the current situation, consider the development of cooperatives in all its potential? Is enough co-housing Act as transformative action? Build houses is enough to change the world? Obviously not. However, it is necessary for the workers to have houses. It is a step forward. That was a great learning experience.”
The main learning of FUCVAM about the Housing Act was to understand a set of strategies to bring the interests of the cooperative movement to general society. The Act, enacted by an government explicitly opposed to social interests, was made possible by understanding co-operators, about the need to propose a law to empower his interests with the needs of business sector of the construction.
Finally, another important learning process, still remembered in cooperative training courses that dictates FUCVAM, is the negotiation with powerful actors and create agreements of a position as a collective group. After intense debate, with positions that were opposed in some cases, the movement reached agreement and positioned against the government to demand a law that would promote access to housing in a national level.
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