Social Renting NOW!

As part of Habitat for Humanity’s global advocacy campaign called Home Equals, Habitat Argentina carried out different actions to promote its local campaign named ¡Alquiler Social YA! (Social Renting NOW!), which seeks to make visible the situation faced by families who cannot afford to rent homes in adequate conditions in the country.

These people generally have to rent homes in informal settlements, tenements, and boarding houses, among others; characterized by not having the minimum conditions of habitability such as access to basic services, good ventilation, natural lighting, prevailing overcrowding, and insecurity of tenure, among others.

During 2023, an election year in the country, one of the main actions of the campaign was the execution of the Social Rental Workshops. These were sessions for the co-creation of knowledge among actors from different sectors including government, neighbors affected by the problem, and the technical team of the presidential candidates -among them a housing expert from the electoral campaign of Javier Milei, current president of Argentina-, as many others.

As a result, Habitat Argentina was able to consolidate its position as an expert on the topic, connect with new actors, and expand its contact base, as well as identify potential allies to help place the issue on the public agenda. It also provided an approach from the perspective of the families affected by the problem to the more than 90 participants, who heard from the voice of the affected neighbors their own experience, while sitting at the table to add ideas for possible solutions for social renting.

Finally, Habitat created a Social Renting Promotion Group, made up of representatives from all sectors, committed to continue raising the voice of the need for social renting in the country. Successful cases of public policy advocacy by civil society in Argentina show that advocacy groups and alliances of organizations are the most effective ways to mobilize this type of policy.

Although in December 2023 the new Argentine government repealed the National Rent Law, further hindering the fight against social renting, there is still a possibility that Congress will reverse the decision. The Social Renting Promotion Group already has its first meeting and will be working on the matter during 2024.