THINKING CRITICALLY ABOUT BRAZILIAN AND CHILEAN HOUSING POLICIES

Abstract

The article analyzes the information on Chilean and Brazilian housing policies and presents field research conducted with social housing residents in Santiago, Chile. This work emphasizes the subjective perspective generated by the process of homeownership. The Chilean experience demonstrates a great complexity in the production of social housing from a business perspective. Since 2009, Brazil's recent political interest in this course of action has raised the debate on the impacts of this model on Brazilian cities. Although studies have given greater emphasis to the architectural, urban, and political criticism of the model, the impacts on the subjectivity aspect of social practices are yet to be studied. Through a combination of methods, such as bibliographic research, documentary research, interviews, and observation, this work demonstrates the impacts of neoliberal housing policies through the approximation between Brazilian and Chilean realities. These policies cause complex subjectivation processes characterized by crossed relationships between the reproduction of a social imposition and the contestation of unique patterns. The work contributes to the discussion of housing in the Latin American context by taking into account housing programs and the consequences of a neoliberal model for the daily lives of their beneficiary families.