Environments by Design

Abstract

Incremental housing is seen as an antidote to affordability challenges, allowing low-income families to transform their habitable space through time and pay for it in a phased manner. It applies to a solution where the government created an environment favourable to the owner-building of dwellings. However, scholarship on incremental housing continues to focus largely on tenure, building materials and housing conditions at a local level, while self-built housing is a pathway to debt by burdening low-income households with the customisation process. Thus, this housing solution is vital for the reproduction of the capitalist landscape. This article examines the impediments of self-building practices imposed on low-income families for criticising current Chilean program of delivering unfinished houses. The hypothesis holds that examination of occupants’ current customisation issues acknowledges the consequences of top-down decision-making practices. Mapping customisation issues is necessary to understand fundamental questions of how and why initiatives aimed at improving participation levels of incremental housing dwellers get stuck. For achieving this aim, the author uses qualitative methods such as questionnaire, semi-structured interview, observation, photographic survey, and diagrams of Lo Espejo condominium (2007) and Las Higueras (2006), located in the Santiago Metropolitan Area of Chile. The article is concluded with the outline of needed adjustments of the current practice of delivering the unfinished house without professionals’ support for customisation.