This is a CTP of initiative: ICA/CCVQ (Argentina)
In this Critical Turning Point an innovation that defines the subsequent trajectory of the Quilmes Cooperative Limited of consumption and housing: a system of allocation of housing develops a system of housing allocation based on the accumulation of man-hours of work of the members of the cooperative in the activities of auto-construction and the infrastructure of the neighbourhood. The construction of housing is carried out under an unconventional system, diverse of the known systems, even the auto-construction systems. It was designed in an Assembly, a scoring system based on clear cooperatives rules. To obtain the housing there are two types of contributions: hours of work in the construction and work in module. One point is awarded for each hour of work in the construction, so, work more hours in the construction implies a highest score. The minimum quantity of effective working hours in the construction are 80 hours per month, and there are no exists a maximum limit. Are required 5000 hours in total in the development of different tasks. The cost of the working hour in June of 2007 was of $ 3.50 (Argentinean pesos), that is similar to the average of the working hour of the “medio official” and the official bricklayer. And for every module 50 points are awarded. It is required the payment of 400 modules in total, each of them costs $75 (Argentinean pesos) and it is equal to the value of the costs of materials.
In this CTP was relevant the participation of the arquitect Rodolfo Levingston, who proposed them the utilization of an innovative mode of industrial construction of housing. The failure of this attempt resulted in the definition of the type of house they would build in the future: “Levingston, an architect, arrived with a proposal: to test an industrial system. We started using it. It took us a lot of time to adapted to it, and also we waste a high percetage of material, maybe because weren’t from the trade. The material was display “telgopor” . We were working like that for three months, and with that material –all the member from here- we regularly travelled to San Justo (a city in Buenos Aires province) to prepared the structure, to soldered it and after that, bring it again to Quilmes. Well, to that situation, so far so good. But it is like the joke: “if the communism does not “touch” to all of us, everything was ok. But when we started to do the first house and did not like it, well… we rioted… A lot of people, of partners were gone… After a while, they incorporated themselves again to the project, but was a critical moment in which the project almost collapse. The main conflict was that, practically, nobody want that house, it was not what we want. We were used to the traditional construction, and we were learning to work in the construction while, most of us, were living in brick houses with roofs of earthenware and this new system was a floating roof plate without structure, so you could not break the wall because all will fall on you. There was only one block of iron, “telgopor” and cement."
"We desisted from that system and then we, whom were working in the construction, took the project again. Because otherwise it would had being problematic. Half of the persons were from the cooperative and half was not, were persons that cooperated from the Municipality and they did not understand too much. So, we put all our strength on that and we started to do the bases of the housing, the one that the Assembly approved, that were with hollow brick, wooden openings, and a tile roof. And we started to do the bases and after that appeared the problem that there were available a lot of money. We were finishing paying the land, we had 80 members, and houses for 60 that were outside”.
This took the members to generate a type of delivery housing system adequate to the characteristics of the initiative: the Module .
The events related to this CTP are connected to a wider social situation, which exceed the scenario of the Quilmes Cooperative Limited of consumption and housing.
In the first place, the Convertibility Law (No. 23.928) was enacted on 27 March 1991 by the Congress of Argentina, during the government of Carlos Menem, under the initiative of the then Minister of Economy Domingo Cavallo, and the law was valid for the next 11 years. The law established the exchange parity between the Austral, the new Argentinian peso and the US dollar: from 10.000 Australes = 1 US dollar, to subsequently convertible 1 Argentinian peso = 1 US dollar.
“Anyway, this convertibility law, that every called like that, the real effects in daily life was that every time we went to impound the prices of the materials were the same, the fee cost the same for the next 4 or 5 years because it was all retained. Well we had all those years that we were building to our maximum capacity. The only problem was that under that reality, there were a complicated social issue....”
The convertibility law leave a fixed price for buying the materials, allowing to maintain a fixed cost of the module. The convertibility law leave a fixed price for buying the materials, which allowed to maintain a fixed cost of the module. The price of the module was defined by the Assembly of the Cooperative: the form of indexing the module was a product of a social currency created, managed and controlled by the group of the Quilmes Cooperative Limited of consumption and housing, and increased its value according the calculations of the Assembly. The adjustment process of the value is participatory and democratic, and intervenes the Board of Directors, the Evaluate Commission of Costs and other members of the Cooperative. In the Assemblies, a cost analysis of the materials is presented and also it is established an accessible and an average value for the neighbour in order to prevent the des-capitalization of the cooperative.
To this situation, we must add the housing deficits of the "Conurbano Bonaerense", and the Municipality of Quilmes, that it is not a stranger actor to these deficits. Also, the system of auto-construction and the module, both serve as a mechanism to solve these problems of the popular classes.
This Critical Turning Point can be understood as a way of organizing a set of actors around the satisfaction of basic needs such as access to ownership a quality house. It is in turn, a way to consolidate the role of the cooperative as a binder of a set of demands of the actors and an appreciation of its main asset, in other others words: the work.
The scoring system based on the work by reducing the monetary cost, it is the key to expanding access to housing within this experience mechanism. This is like this because the valorisation of work as a social currency of the cooperative allows the accumulation of work by the partners.
“We started to think a system fair for all. The fairest thing for everyone is based on what each of us can contribute. When we talk about “what each of us can contribute”, we are referring to work, not money. If we had money, we would not be here, we would be in somewhere else. Here, the most important thing were the work. So we created a scoring system: more hours of work, more score, the one who has more score, will be the first to have the house. This scoring system had to be equal for everyone. The main member could work the 80 mandatory hours and, also, could work the hours that he want to. A replacement partner of the family father group, a brother or a son, can also do the mandatory 80 hours, besides the mandatory hours of the main member of the Cooperative. Apart from that, I the scoring system we had the fee, the fee wroth 50 points and you can pay maximum two fee per month. So you could not have more than 100 points per fee, and no more than 80 hours, so who arrived faster had the house. Twenty houses were adjudicated, like the regulation stablish, and then we also adjudicate those nineteen houses without a problem, and after that, we continue the construction of another twenty houses”.
In this way, the members of the Quilmes Cooperative Limited of consumption and housing achieve the development of a system adequate to meet their own needs, this turn viable the access to a respectable house through the auto-construction system.
The members of the Quilmes Cooperative Limited of consumption and housing could not anticipate this Critical Turning Point. There were a process that created conflicts among the members since the advance of the self-building of housing.
The advance of the construction of housing caused the conflict around the adjudication of the houses among the partners of the Cooperative. The mechanism of resolution of the conflict was the development of a mechanism of granting of houses based on the accumulation of working hours of the members.
The wider social scenario allowed to maintain stable the cost of the module for more than ten years, given stability to the project. Apart from that, the capacity to provide work, besides the money, allowed to the unemployed members to maintain their role in the Cooperative since a bigger contribution of work, in their own houses and the others houses.
The learnings processes in this Critical Turning Point are produce since the conflict caused by the adjudication of the first houses built by the Quilmes Cooperative Limited of consumption and housing. The learning processes started with the practices on the field and then they were codified in the regulations of the Cooperative.
The self-building system is based on a monetary contribution and in the work of the members. In this sense, one of the most interesting results of this experience is the training offer in the building of the own house. This imply that there is a technical know-how that is generate it in the collective development of housing construction and the first members of teach to the new partners all the knowledge. Another achievement is the rescue of values and knowledge “apparently” forgotten. And finally, the members who participated directly in the communities' activities construction in the neighbourhood and around it, they feel more “decent”, more "worthy" regarding its works and themselves.
The development of the module is a product of a learning process in which are participated: the personal experience of the members, the evaluation of the available resources and their role in the model of production. This learning process allowed them to continue with the auto-construction system during more than thirty years.
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