State-subsidized housing programs have improved the livelihood of low-income populations in Latin American cities for decades. Once inhabited, however, they do not succeed in guaranteeing these populations’ safety. When residents are rehoused from informal settlements controlled by organized criminal groups, these groups sustain influence in formalized housing complexes. What is more, new dynamics such as housing financialization increase residents’ exposure to criminal actors. This project has explored such ‘weaponization’ of social housing by comparing governance arrangements between state, market and criminal actors in formal social housing condominiums to those in informal settlements.
The project had 3 objectives:
1) To complete a theoretical framework to study urban sovereignty
State sovereignty's environmental and material conditions are key issues in the Anthropocene era, shaping international cooperation. Governments strive to maintain control amid ecological hazards, contested authority, and challenges from various actors. Illicit practices challenging sovereign authority are widespread, spanning urban and rural areas, crossing borders, and impacting production and consumption. Territorial sovereignty, while upheld as a potent concept, remains a constructed fiction that requires continual (infrastructural) reinforcement by states and governments. This reinforcement occurs despite indications of their susceptibility to external influences and the manipulation of power dynamics by illicit actors. The urban materialities, spanning from the ground itself, through infrastructural systems, to housing, form the foundation of functional and territorial sovereignty, conceptualizing sovereignty as a perpetually enacted and asserted construct.
SO2: To develop a transferable comparative methodology
I identified significant shifts in Brazil’s social housing program, Minha Casa Minha Vida (MCMV), in response to global financial crises. Initially directed towards aiding the lowest income groups, the program gradually redirected its focus towards low-income and low-middle-income households in subsequent phases, aiming to reduce costs but sparking concerns regarding equity and program objectives. These measures often fell short in providing affordable housing for the most vulnerable sectors due to the influence of private investment and speculation.
Colombia is mirroring Brazil’s trajectory in housing policy. The Brazilian program underwent suspension during the tenure of former president Jair Bolsonaro in 2018 and has only recently been reinstated with the return of President Lula. This revival has brought about changes in the program’s accessibility, with a greater emphasis now placed on directing resources towards lower-income populations, while still extending opportunities for homeownership, including secured mortgages, to middle-income groups.
There has been a notable shift in Colombia’s social housing policy, transitioning from a broad housing-for-all approach to a model increasingly characterized by financialization, resembling the Brazilian framework. Brazil’s program has emerged as a benchmark example, influencing governments at various levels, from national to municipal, to transition from a policy of “assistance” (assistencialismo) to one rooted in financial mechanisms.
SO3: To gain knowledge of how governance arrangements between state, market and criminal groups differ
Both cities and countries witness changes in their political conjuncture. In both countries a new leftist president centralizes new hopes for a progressive housing policy and a security policy reform. With Colombia’s president Gustavo Petro, urban peace aims to translate the national peacebuilding efforts to the urban scale of Medellín. Urban peace means to develop processes of submission to justice of large criminal structures. These are dedicated to all types of criminal activities, mainly drug trafficking. While FARC and the ELN have their origin in the already demobilized guerrillas, they are now more involved in criminal dynamics. However, large paramilitary groups are also competing territories and now, partly, open to enter peace negotiations.
The securitization of social housing, particularly for the low-income sector, has heightened public awareness of criminal influence in urban development. Recent shifts in political leadership, proposals for renewed peace talks, and growing activism to address the expansion of militias have coincided with increased ecological disasters, reflecting cities’ vulnerability to climate change effects. This convergence of criminalized governance and environmental threats has led me to conceptualize a generalized uncertainty termed “dwelling in limbo”.
