Public Housing and Urban Space in Santiago de Chile. A restrospective View to the State Action in the First Decades of the 20th Century

Abstract

Chilean public housing begins in the last decade of the 19th century, when initiatives that tried to solve the problem of popular housing arose from philantrophy and catholic charity. The State gave an important step by promulgating the Workers Housing Law in 1906, which became the first law trying to approach that situation in an integral way. The Cheap Rooms Law and the Renting Law of 1925 are a consequence of the application of the 1906 legislation, as well as the social and political processes that Chile experienced during the first decades of the 20th Century. The territorial aspects that shaped those initiatives are analyzed, considering the localization of the main neighborhoods built around those actions in the city of Santiago, and the respective social and political debate accompanying this process.