El Espacio Local: Entre Lineamientos Políticos y Concreciones.

Abstract

Politics “is the set of points of view (....) that different agencies take and which express a certain way of intervention, in relation to matters that move social actors” (Oszlak and O´Donnel, 1982). Thus housing policy is the result of the set of decisions and actions of the public sector in the field of housing within a specific social, political and economic system. So its formulation and implementation is the result of the correlation of different social forces which have diverging political viewpoints within society. Just like the state has been restructured in order to adapt to the new neoliberal way, its policies and organisations have been integrated to the capitalist movement. Two ways of accessing housing have thus endured : the private sector and its close connection to the free market laws and on the other hand the focalised customer oriented state help as a way of social protection. Faced with this reality and as a result of decentralisation, the local agencies, at the centre of the confrontation between the neoliberal political models and the real needs of the people, are faced with conflict and opposing interests. Nonetheless and in spite of their limitations, they have become the ideal space from which management processes have started to develop . They work as systematic integration and participatory articulation points, making the paradigms that rule social policies under the present free market context more flexible. Within the context of the supporting actions that AVE-CEVE carries out along with the Argentinean town councils , the Esperanza case shows the permanent tension between the ideal and what is actually possible given the context of a narrowing and focalised political framework . This case also shows that it is possible to find flexibility in neoliberal policies in order to come up with better solutions than the existing ones.