Crucial Factors in Uruguayan Housing Cooperativism: Contributions to the Design of Public Policies on Social Housing

Abstract

The Uruguayan experience with housing cooperatives has been recognised for building and maintaining quality low-cost social housing for a significant part of the country’s population. The objective of this study was to identify and analyze the factors that have led to these results. To this end, an analysis of public policy on social housing was carried out using a combination of methods: literature review, desk research, secondary data analysis and participant observation. The results show the factors that contribute to the success of cooperatives, data on their share of the housing stock, their historical development and the different models of housing cooperatives. The discussion suggests that housing co-operatives, especially user co-operatives, constitute a sector apart from the housing market, as they avoid housing speculation. It concludes that the success of this experience is due to the existence, in the context of a consistent housing legislation and an active cooperative social movement, of an effective and specific modality of public action, of a self-governing nature, which concretises the direct and organized action of citizens to guarantee the right to housing.