Argentina is pursuing a novel solution to the shortage of land for social housing in Buenos Aires: building on its railways. The national government has announced a competition inviting architects to submit plans for housing on 544,000 square metres of railway land valued at $290m (£165m) in three areas of the capital, including the affluent central Palermo district.
The first wave of the project foresees the creation of housing and green spaces on land occupied by obsolete workshops and garages, bordering both working railway lines and old tracks disused since the privatisation of railway services in the 1990s. The second wave of the project proposes going further, putting a 32km stretch of the Sarmiento train line underground and building social housing over the top.
With land at a premium in the capital, the project offers an opportunity to build housing in some of the most expensive areas of the city, and the only available spaces left for development.
The move takes place within the context of a long-running battle between the autonomous government of Buenos Aires city, led by businessman Mauricio Macri's centre-right Pro party, and the centre-left national government led by president Cristina Kirchner's Front for Victory party – which has accused Buenos Aires of encouraging property speculation and neglecting low-income families' housing needs. The use of railway land, which belongs to the national government, is the president's one option to sidestep the city government and build social housing on her political rival's turf.
"On a national level, Argentina is a country with plenty of space, and we have built 800,000 [properties] since 2003. But people need to live where the work is. There is a lack of space in Buenos Aires, and the city government is doing nothing to create affordable housing," a party source explains. "The one place the national government can build is on railway land, thanks to the fact that [President Juan Domingo] Peron expropriated the railways from the British in the 1940s."
The last time such swathes of public land were given over to property development it led to the construction of some of the most expensive apartments in the city, the glass skyscrapers of Puerto Madero. The president has said her government has other intentions: "[putting the train line underground] will create a very high value strip of land in the city centre. This will not be used for commercial property speculation. We're not about commercial property speculation."
The project is to be financed by ANSES, the Argentinian social security body, and its credit programme Pro.Cre.Ar – launched last year with the objective of building 400,000 new homes in four years. The programme offers low-income earners loans to buy houses at rates as low as 2%, against an estimated 25% inflation rate.
Fabio Gentilli, regional director of ANSES, says: "Pro.Cre.Ar isn't a project for the poorest of the poor but for young professional people and couples who cannot afford a house. Our construction projects are also creating jobs and reactivating the economy, which has started to slow down because of the international recession.
"The Buenos Aires city government is doing nothing about the housing shortage, so we have to step in and build where we can."
While the government has invested heavily in social housing, stating it has built 846,000 homes since 2003, demand still outstrips supply. The General Sarmiento National University's Infohabit housing policy research centre estimates that the housing shortage in Buenos Aires affects 500,000 people, causing the national and provincial governments to look for new ways to solve the problem.
At the end of 2012, the provincial government of Greater Buenos Aires passed a "habitat law", forcing developers of the increasing number of luxury gated communities to cede 10% of their land, or make an equivalent financial donation, towards the construction of social housing. Opposition deputy Francisco de Narváez claimed the policy was "complicated, dangerous and stupid" and would "destroy the right to private property".
Critics of the national government's latest plan to build on the railways say that the project will never come to fruition; they point out that President Juan Domingo Peron first mooted the idea of putting the Sarmiento train line underground in 1948 when he appropriated it from the British-owned Buenos Aires Western Railway Company. Residents in the neighbourhoods affected are also unhappy about the proposals.
Gustavo Desplats of the Caballito Residents' Association said: "This will only pile more people into neighbourhoods that are already overpopulated and lacking decent water, sewage and electric facilities."
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