The Architectural Typologies of Latinx Housing Precarity

Abstract

Housing precarity in the Latinx community has been a persistent problem for decades in the United States. Trailer homes, mobile parks, barrack-like housing on farms, and substandard homes have influenced the experiences of generations of Latinx immigrants in the U.S. While these architectural forms may have been conceived as transient architecture, these housing typologies have become persistent through time and ignored from public debate. This paper explores the history of these precarious housing typologies and their role shaping Latinx spatial practices and lived spaces in rural America. Through spatial justice lenses this paper considers how precarious American housing typologies of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have historically marginalized the Latinx community obscuring their presence. Using case studies from the 1942 Bracero Program to contemporary Latinx housing in rural Vermont and Mississippi, this paper examines the Latinx lived spaces and housing typologies from a historical perspective. Additionally, it explores the spatial implications and linkages between Latinx labor and housing. When their labor is conducted in remote rural areas and small towns, their presence is obscured often times living and working on the farms and putting up with substandard housing. Research methods include examination of architectural documentation such as historical and contemporary photographs and drawings and in-depth interviews with Latinx immigrants and advocates of the Latinx community. This paper provides an analysis of housing conditions and dwelling structures through history that have been overlooked by researchers and practitioners in architectural fields. Increasing barriers to access to adequate and affordable housing in the Latinx community are interconnected with their immigration status and their limited access to resources, resulting on access to a limited and deteriorating housing stock with unsafe and unhealthy conditions. Finally, this paper offers a deeper understanding on how the labor and immigration context has influenced housing patterns in small towns and rural places.