DJ

The first thing to point out is how the dictatorship fomented this idea in the mass consciousness that it was necessary to become a homeowner — and so everybody ends up wanting to be a property owner here. But this is impossible for a significant percentage of people who cannot afford to buy a home.

This dream arises out of a basic uncertainty. When you ask an older adult, why do you want to have a house? Why do you dream of having a house? They tell you, “Because I want to have a place to rest my bones, to stay there until I die.” They know that the state is completely absent, unwilling to provide you with security or the right to live a dignified life until the day you die.

For us, the right to live with dignity is much more important than the right to be a property owner. This is true for a variety of reasons, the first being the natural fluidity or dynamism of people’s housing needs.

When you live with your parents, you don’t need a home. If you leave home when you’re single, you only need a studio. If you become part of a couple, you need a bedroom as well. If you have that first child, then you need two bedrooms. If you have another child of the opposite sex, a third bedroom. Then the children grow up, and you don’t need at least one of those bedrooms. So, it just sits there unused, and then the second child leaves and gets married, and you have another extra bedroom you don’t need.

Then you get separated from your partner and only need a room again. Or you go back home to live with your parents. So I don’t think it’s worth it to pay into the financial system twenty-five to thirty years, paying four times the original value, just for the privilege of being a homeowner. I really don’t think this makes any sense. So, we have to guarantee via state intervention in the rental market, that everyone who can’t buy a home can rent one at a fair price.

In sociology, fair prices are determined by establishing the highest percentage of family income that should be proportioned to mortgage or rent. Housing costs shouldn’t exceed 20 or 25 percent of your income. This is why we are constructing Chile’s first public housing, which we’ve never truly had.

Social housing has been built, but always with the intention of giving it to people as property. But never public housing which actually remains in state hands, so that it can be rented out at a fair price. Another great thing about building social housing is it permits the state to intervene in and remodel the city with a different vision. If you leave it to the market, we know perfectly well what happens in Chile. We have seen how the market builds the city, guided by only its own profits and needs, and never the good of the city. We are currently constructing our first building, which will have thirty-eight municipal apartments available to rent out at a fair price.