Slum Housing Attrition: A Positive Twist from Cali, Colombia

Abstract

This essay discusses what has happened to relocated slum families who are forced to sell out of a housing project because of economic reasons within their first four years of residence. Many dropouts buy into established squatter settlements on the urban fringe and experience intraclass vertical mobility. Although families desire to be incorporated into the urban working class (interclass vertical mobility), they have not achieved this goal nor does it appear likely they will do so in the future due to a lack of greatly accelerated industrial expansion in Cali. In order to reduce the cost of low-income housing and the consequent cheating of buyers, it is suggested that governments push self-built housing on municipally subdivided and allocated land combined with a residential and maintenance cooperative of some type.