¿On the roadside? An inventory of self-managed habitat strategies in Chile

Abstract

Recognizing their multiplicity and extents as well as rejecting their ill-posed reputation as residual or peripheral practices, this article assumes the task of describing, cataloging, and quantifying some of the main contemporary strategies of habitat self-management in Chile, highlighting their contribution to promote improvements in living conditions for several population groups. For this purpose, a quantitative and descriptive methodology is applied, based on the analysis of Casen 2017 survey data that seeks to estimate the incidence of different practices linked to habitat self-management among households in the first quintile of income and analyze their intersections. From the analysis carried out, it is concluded that these practices are extremely varied and have a high numerical significance. As can be seen, more than 930 thousand households (83% of households in the first income quintile) possess concrete experience or capacities for habitat self-management in at least one of the dimensions identified. Likewise, it is observed that the mobilization of support networks, the community or self-managed provision of basic services, together with the improvement and self-construction of housing constitute the most frequent modalities..