"Young Town" growing up : four decades later : self-help housing and upgrading lessons from a squatter neighborhood in Lima

Abstract

This thesis examines self-help housing policies in Peru by revisiting Independencia, one of Lima's young towns (squatter settlements), forty-five years after its founding. The study was designed to better understand how Independencia's low and moderate income families have been able to access and upgrade their housing from a long-term perspective. The thesis has three objectives: 1) to explore the different factors that influenced housing investments by the poor in Independencia; 2) to understand how programs created to support housing, have in fact contributed to or served as resources for families in Independencia; and 3) to understand how this process has worked and whether it is still able to meet the housing needs of families in Independencia. An underlying issue is the nature of incremental housing and progressive self-managed development. The house is perceived as a process and not as a final product. Using the housing trajectory as the unit of analysis, it is possible to see how this model has worked, how investments were made (building process), why investments were made and what provided the opportunities (influential factors). Based on findings from the data collected from thirty-one family interviews and housing surveys, the conclusions consider the role of external factors (public services, public infrastructure investments, land tenure, micro-credit, etc) and internal factors (family income and demographics) in housing investments over the forty-five years of its growth. Findings suggest that multi-generational needs are not being met and new forms of ownership, legal tenure, new credit, financing mechanisms and technical assistance are required.

(cont.) Regional planning issues are also emerging that must be confronted for successful integration of the settlements into the city fabric. Most of the literature on squatter settlements generally has looked at them in only one point in time. This thesis has a novel approach and contributes substantially to the research on squatter settlements because it emphasizes the need for a more dynamic and long-term method for evaluating the development processes of these communities.