TITLE:
Renting and Sharing in Low-Income Informal Settlements: Lacunae in Research and Policy Challenges
AUTHORS:
Aabiya N. Baqai, Peter M. Ward
KEYWORDS:
Informal Housing, Renting, Shared Accommodation, Latin America, Public Policy, Densification, Self-Help
JOURNAL NAME:
Current Urban Studies,
Vol.8 No.3,
September
22,
2020
ABSTRACT: This
paper describes the nature of low-income housing markets for renting and sharing in Latin America and the Caribbean. It
reviews the importance of non-owner housing markets associated with
early urbanization from the late nineteenth century to the mid-1940s when
rental tenements of different types—often slums—predominated as migrant and worker housing. The rapid rise of informal
settlements and self-building from the 1950s onwards inverted the tenurial
status of low-income housing markets: “ownership” eclipsed renting, and
whether informal or formal, became the primary mode of state supported housing
production. However, as informal access to land slowed in the 1980s and 1990s, so renting and sharing began to
emerge as subsidiary and increasingly important housing market
alternatives, such that many cities are now
showing a relative and significant decline in home ownership levels.
Much of this rise in renting and sharing has occurred as a result of
densification in the older, now consolidated, barrios that formed in the
1970s-90s. Despite this turnaround in low-income housing production and
opportunities, public policy for
non-ownership remains almost non-existent. Drawing upon detailed case
studies, this article reviews the contemporary nature and dynamics of rental
and shared housing across the region, and offers a series of policy approaches and instruments to promote both the
supply and demand for non-ownership housing, primarily targeting the poor in the coming two decades.