Catalogue of Local Inclusive Public Policies

Public policies
catalogue

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Universal access to land and housing for the population at the Municipality of Castelli

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Castelli - Argentina

Region
Latin America and the Caribbean
Range of Demographic Size
19,999 inhabitants or less (populated areas)

11.1 By 2030, ensure access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services and upgrade slums.

11.3 By 2030, enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory, integrated and sustainable human settlement planning and management in all countries.

G - Territorial inequality, spatial mobility and vulnerability

American Convention on Human Rights

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).

Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights in economic, social and cultural rights (San Salvador Protocol).

Summary

This is a policy aimed at solving the housing shortage in Castelli, by allocating land and urbanizing, thus guaranteeing universal access to decent housing. A trust is also created, namely Castelli es tu casa –the first municipal real-estate trust in the country–, so that all the resources collected from the future land awardees through this Trust are exclusively used in land and housing production, so as to make this program sustainable.

Implementation Date:

Start: 10 / 12 / 2011

End: End: Currently in force

Housing
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The main problem tackled by this public policy is the housing shortage for families in Castelli, and their impossibility to have access to urban land. According to the last national census, carried out in 2010, Castelli had 8205 inhabitants (2721 households), with an annual average growth rate of 0.49%, equivalent to 12 new households yearly from 2001 to 2010. In 2001, 82% of the population was urban, while only 18% lived in rural areas. The rural-to-urban migration phenomenon surged during that decade, generating a significant demographic pressure that impacted the housing shortage increase. In 2010, this shortage greatly exceeded 500 families without land to build their houses, along with their impossibility to have access to land or to adequate housing. Summing up, the starting point was the lack of urban planning and available urban land, the lack of housing units, difficulty in having access to land titles, and irregular possession of land.
Eliminating housing shortage in the municipality of Castelli –both the qualitative shortage (housing units that require improvements and/or expansion works) and the quantitative shortage (the need of new housing units, because the already inhabited units cannot be reformed).
Agencia Social de Tierras y Vivienda (Land and Housing Social Agency): This agency is in charge of organizing the land and housing demand in Castelli, as well as assisting land and housing applicants, acquiring and urbanizing land, collecting the program’s monthly installments, and carrying out the Trust’s day-to-day activities.
Secretaría de Obras Públicas (Secretariat of Public Works): In charge of implementing the infrastructure works necessary to urbanize the neighborhoods built by the Municipality, consisting of housing units and serviced land plots. Dirección de Planeamiento Urbano (Directorate of Urban Planning): In charge of identifying the land suitable for urbanization within this public policy, implementing design and urbanization projects in the neighborhoods, and carrying out the urban planning process within the municipal common land. Dirección de Catastro (Directorate of Land Registry): In charge of analyzing the land identified as capable of being urbanized from the legal, tax and title viewpoints.
This public policy is supported by two municipal ordinances and one executive order. The first ordinance regulates the recovery by the Municipality of capital gains generated by municipal actions, resulting in urban development agreements with landowners. The second ordinance was issued to create the Trust. The executive order sets forth the creation of the Land and Housing Social Agency.
Society in general
Advice
Financial/legal/technical assistence
The urban land generation strategy was the starting point to solve a significant issue in terms of eliminating the housing shortage. In December 2011, the first important step was taken in this sense: declaring five plots of land in the public interest and subject to expropriation, which were strategically located in Castelli’s urban area. Due to such declaration, a national-funded social housing neighborhood was built on one of such plots of land. As a result, the owners of the other plots of land declared to be in the public interest and subject to expropriation have started negotiations with the Municipality in order to agree on the conditions to sell their property. With respect to other plots of land, the Municipality signed urban development agreements with the landowners, whereby the local government committed to the following: in the first place, changing the zoning code of the land, so as to allow for urbanization; second, carrying out all the infrastructure works that were originally the landowners’ responsibility. As way of compensation, the landowners transferred to the Municipality 70% of the urbanized lots generated by these works. Therefore, the Municipality started generating urban land for those families that applied for lots. Based on this experience, ensuring access to land and housing for all Castelli’s inhabitants has become the Municipality’s priority management strategy. In order to improve this policy and ensure an ongoing availability of resources, the Castelli es tu casa Land and Housing Trust started to be developed by the end of 2016, which was formally created in May 2017. Additionally, at the beginning of 2017, a key element for municipal urban, land and housing management was finally established, namely, the Land and Housing Social Agency –a municipal body that coordinates and organizes all the areas related to habitat improvement.
Innovation comes with the instruments used to implement this public policy: not only expropriation and urban development agreements were used as methods to generate urban land, but also the concept of trust, i.e., an instrument generally applied by private developers, but not usually implemented in municipal public policies. Castelli es tu casa is the first municipal real-estate trust in the country, and its advantage relies on the fact that it ensures all resources collected from the future land awardees are exclusively used for land and housing generation. Additionally, as a result of this strategy, the habitat public policy does not depend on municipal resources, since the purchase of land and the urban development works are funded with the contributions made by the families that are part of the Trust.
An agreement was signed with the Energy Services Cooperative, whereby a joint investment (Municipality-Cooperative) was made in order to put in place three wind power generators to produce the electric power used in the city.
The implementation of this policy involves the participation of the community. In fact, all the awardees of serviced land or housing units are part of the municipal Land and Housing Trust.
Both the Trust and the Land and Housing Social Agency have been created with the purpose of being long-lasting instruments to implement these policies.
Local goverment
Subnational goverment
National government
Other
The implementation of these policies allowed the Municipality to build 126 social housing units since 2011, along with 111 additional housing units built through the Programa de Crédito Argentino del Bicentenario (PROCREAR program), and 365 serviced lots generated through different transactions, coupled with 266 serviced lots currently under production through the Land and Housing Trust. Summing up, in seven years, the Municipality has generated a total of 631 serviced lots, and housing units have been built in 237 of such lots (one house per lot).
This public policy is locally promoted by the Municipality using different media, such as the municipal press and local broadcasting stations –radio and television– and graphic media. Also, the habitat public policy is promoted through different cooperation agreements signed with other Argentine municipalities, while offering technical assistance services to other local governments.
• Construir Igualdad award (2018 edition) – ICPHR-UNESCO

Instrumentos

11.1 By 2030, ensure access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services and upgrade slums.

11.3 By 2030, enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory, integrated and sustainable human settlement planning and management in all countries.

G - Territorial inequality, spatial mobility and vulnerability
American Convention on Human Rights
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).
Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights in economic, social and cultural rights (San Salvador Protocol).

Location

Region
Latin America and the Caribbean
Range of Demographic Size
19,999 inhabitants or less (populated areas)

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