This is a CTP of initiative: ICA/COVILPI (Argentina)
On March 18, 2002, members of COVILPI, along with other social organizations related to the habitat problem, mobilized to the City Hall of Buenos Aires city to claim the continuity of the housing policies developed until that moment.
Until 2000, the city still did not have a juridical-institutional framework that defined the main criteria of orientation of its housing policy. A conception of housing as a private property was continued, and social organizations were not recognized as executors and/or beneficiaries of housing projects, despite the fact that the few joint experiences that were developed with the 525 resolution. This situation was modified in the first government of Aníbal Ibarra as Head of Government of City and Eduardo Jozami, as political head of the Municipal Housing Commission (CMV, in its spanish initials).
During the Jozami administration, there was a diversification in the menu of housing policy options, assuming that the CMV, unlike previous administration, was the institutional area that should channel the housing emergency. In this sense, an attempt was made to redirect scarce resources, in the midst of an economic recession, towards low income sectors with participation in socio-territorial organizations. Above all, Operative 525 was suspended and replaced by the implementation of Law 341, in which there was a clear desire to advance in its implementation and even reallocate budget items for the CMV for the purchase of the first land by cooperatives.
However, this very explicit definition of the housing policy generated conflicts with business sectors and other interests that did not accept to lose control in the CMV. This led to a change of administration at the CMV in March 2002, with the displacement of Jozami at the head of the CMV and a reorientation of the housing policy in which self-management projects lost relevance.
The displacement of Jozami put in alert to the social organizations that mobilized to the City Hall to request a meeting with the head of government. Faced with the negative, the groups mobilized entered the building and finally got their interview. The Head of Government Ibarra promised to evaluate his decision and asked for a fourth intermediate.
Finally, Jozami was replaced and in the immediate post-crisis, the new head of the CMV reinforced the budget priority for the urbanization process of temporary housing, which benefited by a significant increase of 500% and resumed the CMV's traditional business oriented execution. The La Boca Habitat Rehabilitation program was also supported and emphasis was placed on the reestablishment of operations aimed at middle sectors. In addition, the granting of collective and individual loans was maintained through Law 341. However, the new administration reduced the levels of participation of social organizations in the construction of housing policy.
In the period previous to Jozami's displacement from CMV, this institution was the institutional key area to channel the solution of the "housing emergency" of the population residing in subsidized hotels, although it did not deepen guidelines according to the complexity of the task. This situation was in crisis in 2001, when the local government wanted to limit its expenses in the payment of rents. Different actors, including several leftist political parties, encouraged the formation of housing cooperatives in this population.
The social organizations had participated actively in the elaboration of the law 341, reason why the authorities of the CMV decided to summon them to apply the law regulation:
"No one knew the law. How did we start it? We met with [the person who coordinated the program] and he tells us: look, there are two organizations that are the drivers of Law 341: Mutual of Evicted of La Boca and MOI. There were 3 very important groups of families who were with the problem of housing very serious, and it develops in our head the challenge. And then he tells me "Are you capable of forming a team?" And I said "Yes, let's make a team" ... So this technical team we formed was made up of 4 architects and we started working with those organizations. It was the first work that was done with the 341, in addition to the MOI that had its teams, we, ´El Palomar´, ´Manos Solidarias´, ´La Lechería´ and the evicted of La Boca. That was the basis and the beginning of this."
Regarding the executive organization of self-management, it was established that each cooperative was accompanied by a member of the social team and an architect of the management technical team, with a personalized follow-up that continued until the end of the work. After the initial groups were formed into cooperatives, weekly meetings were organized from the CMV with each of them in which the members of the social team assisted and advised in the fulfillment of formalities and in matters internal to the cooperatives, such as those related to the conformation of the cooperative, the division of its tasks and the resolution of differences among its members; And the architects were especially concerned with guiding the organizations in the first step of finding a land for sale in the real estate market that is suitable for the desired construction.
The expulsion of Jozami marked a turn of the local government in relation to the possibility of institutionalizing the participation of social organizations in public policies. Local social organizations interpreted the events as a change of course in Ibarra's policy. In addition, the dynamics of participation generated in those days, in a context of post-crisis 2001, made clear the appropriation logic that went through Law 341 on the part of the social organizations that promoted and sustained the law and The poorer sectors that saw in that program the only way to solve their housing problem (until that moment, the offer of housing programs was historically directed to the middle-low, middle sectors).
This CTP must be understood in the context of transformations that the city of Buenos Aires was experiencing since the mid-1990s. In 1994, the national constitutional reform, established that the City ceased to be a federal district to become an autonomous state. In this way, the city had to dictate its own constitution and to choose for the first time in its history the person in charge of the executive power.The new autonomous government had as a challenge to adapt and adjust the bureaucratic and institutional apparatus in force to this new reality.
Likewise, the new government of the city assumed a more open attitude towards the social conflicts associated with housing problems. In this way, it sanctioned resolution 525 in 1997 in front of the housing emergency that had been unleashed in La Boca and advanced in the elaboration of law 341 with the participation of social organizations.
In 2000, Aníbal Ibarra assume the head of government. He was part of the political alliance that ruled the city since 1996, and the same that had led the former head of government (Fernando De La Rua) to the presidency of the country. Ibarra represented the left wing of the Alliance because he came from the Frepaso (a center-left party).
At the end of 2001, the country experienced a deep economic and political crisis that brought about the resignation of President De la Rua and the end of the political alliance that led him to the government. The city government began to have strong internal tensions because of this political crisis.
The economic crisis had a great impact on the housing situation of the city of Buenos Aires since many renters could not continue paying rent and were virtually homeless. In this context, occupation of empty buildings, conflicts between owners and tenants, and demand for state assistance increased significantly.
Within the framework of this housing emergency, Eduardo Jozami was displaced of the CMV and the institution policy changed.
The project to implement law 341 in the CMV during the Eduardo Jozami´s administration, necessarily implied the permanent participation of members of social organizations. The link between the different actors involved in the implementation was very close. In this context, with clearly stated participatory political will, Jozami convened a broad spectrum of housing organizations to begin discussing the implementation of Law 341 and developing the regulations that would implement the law. For that, a working group was set up at the CMV, which included all housing organizations involved with the law.
It addressed the issues that were considered fundamental to be incorporated into the regulation of the law. Topics such as the choice of the type of ownership of the definitive dwellings -individual or collective- , the use and enjoyment of property (the discussion revolved around enabling this alternative). This debate was linked to the trajectory of the members of the organizations and to an ideological political process of their construction (for example, a large number of cooperatives, more linked to a leftist tradition such as the MOI, were discussing the permanent option Collective property as a possible alternative for law-cooperatives, but organizations that came from a Peronist tradition, which were not even built as cooperatives but as civil associations, did not open the question of individual ownership.
On the other hand, the self-management proposal quickly became a direct threat to the CMV employees because the proposal was different from that they had known and with whom they knew how to deal. Self-management appeared as something new, different, threatening and, consequently, strongly rejected by those who identified with what was "common" to CMV.
The administratio change, in March 2002, generated a political conflict that kept latent the differences of style, politics and management between Jozami, as representative of the CMV, and Ibarra, as head of the local state. This conflict was intersected by multiple political interns within the city government and the governing political force.
In the daily work that developed between the social organizations and the officials of the CMV, a climate of permanent conflict was observed. Above all, there was perceived resistance on the part of the state bureaucracy to the participation of social actors interested in the process of designing public policies. However, Jozami's expulsion from the government, a year and a half after the sanction of Law 341, in March 2002 took everyone by surprise.
The interpretation made by social organizations was that it was at risk everything achieved in the last two years of work so they decided to mobilize to defend their interests. For them, this action was novel:
"Then we organized a Sunday at Garrahan Hospital, we with them and the next day we went under the rain, for most of them it was the first time they mobilized but they mobilized because it was their land, it was their home, it was the life project in which they had been excited. They did not fight for Jozami, they fought for kept that... So it was that he was going to assume an engineer very close to the construction contractors of the National Government, who was the one that put Ibarra, and that mobilization took it out immediately, and they were looking for and they put another person: Engineer Selzer. He had experience in construction, had been working in construction companies, and he arrives and the first plan he has was to liquidate all the technical equipment, all the people who were in the team of 341, all the people of Jozami."
Other interpretations of the episode locate it within the process of great social mobilization that was taking place in Argentina from December of 2001. This episode occurred barely three months after a massive mobilization had caused the resignation of the president of the country. The novelty in this case was that the mobilization was done in defense of a public policy and the official who executed it.
The participation of referents of social organizations (among them members of COVILPI) in the design of the regulation of law 341 was a great learning process for all those who intervened. Although many of those who were part of this experience had already worked on the drafting of the law, the participation of CMV work teams meant a great innovation in the design of public policies.
For some of the participants, this experience allowed them to gain access to a better understanding of the dynamics of functioning of state structures and to generate concrete strategies to obtain greater benefits.
In the case of COVILPI, the participation of some of its members in this process allowed the organization to have a better knowledge of the scope of law 341 and how it could be used.
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