•  buenos aires
• Tuesday, August 16, 2011
• Inter Press Service

The Argentine economy has grown steadily since 2003, and hundreds of thousands of social housing units have been built. Nevertheless, the protests and conflicts that periodically break out make it clear that the solutions have failed to keep up with the need for affordable housing

The Federal Planning Ministry reports that 617,660 housing units have been built nationwide since 2003, another 223,434 are under construction, and work is about to start on more than 22,000 additional units, benefiting a total of nearly four million people, 10 percent of the population of 40 million.

Nevertheless, demand has outstripped supply. The deficit is not only of housing, but of basic services like piped water, sanitation, heating and cooking gas, and rainwater drainage systems.

'Housing is being built, but it's not sufficient to keep up with demographic changes,' Dan Adaszko, an expert on housing issues at the Catholic University of Argentina's Observatory on Social Debt, told IPS.

Adaszko is the author of a study on 'Housing conditions and access to goods and services in Argentina 2010', recently published by the Observatory, which points out that the country's high rates of economic growth have failed to guarantee access to decent housing.

The study says 20.5 percent of households have problems like overcrowding, lack of basic services, poor physical conditions of housing and lack of maintenance, or the fact that the family does not own the land, or the housing unit itself.

The problem is structural in nature, Adaszko said. Ten years ago, when the population stood at 36 million, the percentage of inadequate housing units was basically the same as today. In other words, the gap between supply and demand has not shrunk with time.

The report says some three million housing units are needed, to cover demand. It also says there are other 'irrefutable indicators' of the lag in making basic services available, and that there has only been 'slight improvement' on that front in the last decade.

The study reports that nationwide, 12.4 percent of urban households lack piped water, 34.6 percent have no sewage services, 32.3 percent lack rainwater drainage systems, and 26.8 percent have no piped gas, used for heating and cooking.

Besides these challenges, many poor households face other problems such as exposure to polluting industries and open air dumps. 'The housing deficit is not the only aspect that has to be taken into account, when analysing a country's housing problems,' the report underlines.

In this South American country, where 92 percent of the population is urban, the persistent deficit of housing and basic services is 'unacceptable,' Adaszko said.

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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