{"title":"Housing for all, understood by few: Colloquial narratives from Delhi","authors":"Swati Janu, Anushka Shahdadpuri, C. Cociña","doi":"10.54825/jsdd1652","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.54825/jsdd1652","url":null,"abstract":"In this conversational piece, the authors reflect on their process of designing an interactive toolkit, named ‘Kaun Hai Master? Kya Hain Plan’ (Hindi for ‘Who is the Master? What is the Plan?’), in a step towards linguistic decolonisation. It was developed as a part of the Main Bhi Dilli (Hindi for ‘I’m Delhi too’) Campaign—a civic society campaign in Delhi formed to inclusively reimagine the latest Master Plan for Delhi 2041. The toolkit deconstructed the technocratic documents in English that represent Delhi’s Master Plans, and present a more inclusive alternative to the typical top-down processes behind formulating them. It was developed keeping in mind the communities who are typically left out of planning processes. Drawing from the experience of the workshops conducted using the toolkit, emergent narratives are offered to discuss methods in which key terms and concepts related to housing can be broken down to inform, and align with, people’s struggles in asserting their right to the city. The authors discuss outcomes from the workshops that may enable us to think of ways to embed learnings from on the ground experiences in policy and planning frameworks. Simultaneously, they urge for the expansion of vocabulary located within a particular place and its people.","PeriodicalId":321208,"journal":{"name":"Radical Housing Journal","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128780243","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Homelessness in Southern California: Street-Level Encounters with the State and the Structural Violence of Performative Productivity","authors":"Deyanira Nevárez Martínez","doi":"10.54825/pacx7645","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.54825/pacx7645","url":null,"abstract":"For the unhoused, the criminalization of their existence amplifies their entanglement with the state. Drawing on interviews and over 200 hours of ethnographic observations in Southern California, US, this paper focuses on everyday interactions between street-level bureaucrats and unhoused residents to examine when and how discretion is exercised and how unhoused residents experience these actions. It elucidates the ‘performative productivity’ employed by street-level bureaucrats to perpetuate ‘the myth’ that housing is available and that the central reason we still have homelessness is that unhoused individuals are service resistant. Performative productivity is a set of practices employed by actors including frontline government workers, non-profit workers, and interfaith and other volunteers as the terms of service. They include setting up meetings, filling out countless forms that require invasive sharing of information, signing up for waitlists that go nowhere, and surrendering rights and often accepting an externally imposed moralistic framework. If a person wants any services at all the terms are non-negotiable, thus compelling the unhoused to participate in the performance or risk loss of eligibility for any housing and non-housing services they have been able to attain, as minuscule or limited as these may be. I contend that this is tantamount to state violence. To make salient this point, I include a series of vignettes that present the street-level presence of the state in the lives of unhoused individuals and places it in a global context to highlight the ways in which the system is arbitrary, unhelpful, and potentially fatal.","PeriodicalId":321208,"journal":{"name":"Radical Housing Journal","volume":"84 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126011627","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Patria Román Velázquez, Natalia Pérez, Santiago Peluffo Soneyra, Sophie Rebecca Wall, Melissa Fernández Arrigoitia, C. Cociña
{"title":"Latin Elephant: On language, translations and connections in an urban ethnic migrant movement","authors":"Patria Román Velázquez, Natalia Pérez, Santiago Peluffo Soneyra, Sophie Rebecca Wall, Melissa Fernández Arrigoitia, C. Cociña","doi":"10.54825/kvwe2636","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.54825/kvwe2636","url":null,"abstract":"Latin Elephant is a London-based charity that works with migrant and ethnic groups in processes of urban change, and which has had a critical role in articulating the voices of traders threatened by displacement in the context of the Elephant and Castle redevelopment plans over the last decade. In this Lexicon Conversation, members of Latin Elephant discuss with RHJ the different ways in which language, vocabularies, solidarity, memory and translation have played out in their work in South London, both in relation to the use of English vis-a-vis other native languages, but also in terms of the technical language of planning in relation to intersectional urban struggles on the ground.","PeriodicalId":321208,"journal":{"name":"Radical Housing Journal","volume":"60 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125507784","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Desiring Space: The Affective Politics of Intimacy in Shared Rental Accommodation","authors":"F. Taylor","doi":"10.54825/fvwy6754","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.54825/fvwy6754","url":null,"abstract":"The exorbitant cost of housing in London requires an ever-growing sector of the city’s population to pool economic resources through sharing rented accommodation. In such circumstances, tenants often occupy a state of intimate ‘thrown-togetherness’, residing in quasi-voluntary constellations of impermanent kinship and care. Here, the circulation of feeling politically structures everyday life, as cohabitants jostle for space, sovereignty and economic subsistence. Drawing on an in-depth study of twenty-three millennials living in rented housing in the Borough of Hackney, this paper explores the ways in which the affective politics of intimacy between cohabitants, lovers, friends and between tenants and landlords are significant to the distribution of shelter, autonomy and subsistence within an unregulated housing landscape. Using relational theories of affect, the paper explores the productive politics of ‘sad passions’ among respondents struggling with involuntary proximity and diminished personal sovereignty in shared homes.","PeriodicalId":321208,"journal":{"name":"Radical Housing Journal","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124134945","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Social housing in ruins: Heritage, identity and the spectral remains of the housing crisis","authors":"Z. Price","doi":"10.54825/whhs5204","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.54825/whhs5204","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores a recent acquisition by the Victoria and Albert Museum in the context of the current housing crisis. The exhibit is a fragment of a recently demolished social housing estate, Robin Hood Gardens in East London. The museum, which hails the acquisition as a significant example of the Brutalist movement in architecture, frames the exhibit both as a means of conserving a piece of architectural heritage and as a means of engaging the public in discussion about the future of housing. Yet it cannot be separated from its previous function as a home to several thousand residents before the estate was demolished as part of the area’s ‘regeneration’. This article therefore seeks to explore the contested memory of the estate in the context of today’s housing crisis, and how the exhibit illuminates wider questions of class identity, spectacle and how we define the heritage of the built environment. It will consider a potential defence of the exhibit as ethically motivated by a desire to protect the ‘unofficial heritage’ of the estate, before going on to argue that it ultimately fails in this regard, serving only to aestheticize the act of displacement.","PeriodicalId":321208,"journal":{"name":"Radical Housing Journal","volume":"42 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121205707","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Crowdfunding property in downtown São Paulo: The case of FICA fund","authors":"Renato Cymbalista, Fabiana Endo, Roberto Fontes, Rodrigo Millan","doi":"10.54825/nmxu6853","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.54825/nmxu6853","url":null,"abstract":"Brazilian housing policies have been historically based on private property. There is no national policy or fund for rental, and with few exceptions like the program for affordable housing in the city of São Paulo, local policies do not address this issue either. In 2015, a group came together in São Paulo to think about non-speculative property in Brazil. Some points they converged on included: the will to go beyond the outcry over segregation and gentrification; the awareness that regular private property traded on the market cannot meet social demands nor lead to a just city; the idea of offering solutions to the State, instead of simply demanding solutions from public authorities; a desire to reframe the relations between theory and practice in urban studies. Since then, the response has been experimental and incremental, the product being the carving of FICA, a fund run by a non-profit – the Community Property Association. Since 2017, it has run a flat in downtown São Paulo, donated by early supporters, and rents it at non-speculative prices. In 2021, FICA bought a second flat, fully crowdfunded, and is also experimenting with social investments for shared housing. Currently, FICA controls four properties in different tenure regimes. The text describes FICA’s short and intense history as a unique organization in Brazil. The article hacks the country’s property regulation in order to promote socially progressive and non-speculative models of real estate property.","PeriodicalId":321208,"journal":{"name":"Radical Housing Journal","volume":"53 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115375810","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Carla Rivera Blanco, Melissa García-Lamarca, M. Ferreri
{"title":"Vecinas ≠ neighbours: Language politics in the struggle for housing in Barcelona","authors":"Carla Rivera Blanco, Melissa García-Lamarca, M. Ferreri","doi":"10.54825/ndqu1236","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.54825/ndqu1236","url":null,"abstract":"This Conversation emerges from Radical Housing Journal collaborators’ curiosity and reflections about the growing use of the term vecinas —in English, neighbour— among housing movements in Barcelona in recent years. From our participation in the fight for the right to housing in this city, we wanted to more deeply explore the dynamics behind the word vecinas through a conversation with three housing activists based in Barcelona’s Sant Andreu neighbourhood. From their experiences and activism, they explain the meanings of vecinas, to what extent its use signals a discursive turn, the reason for its feminisation and the convergences and divergences —and also the inclusiveness / exclusivity— in its use by different groups. Finally, they reflect on what vecinas has meant during the Covid-19 pandemic and the ‘no return to normality’.","PeriodicalId":321208,"journal":{"name":"Radical Housing Journal","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131073616","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Securing the city, making the city: Property guardianship and dispersed policing in urban space","authors":"Elara Shurety","doi":"10.54825/jeyt2225","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.54825/jeyt2225","url":null,"abstract":"This article addresses the phenomenon of contemporary property guardianship, a type of building security by live-in occupants, who pay below-market rents, as a growing method of dispersed policing. While the centrality of property security is often foregrounded, both in existing literature on the topic and by property guardian operators, this research charts the increasing use of property guardians as operationalised agents in the surveillance and regulation of urban space. Within this, it looks at property security through an understanding of the building as a spillover site, the security for which has ramifications for wider urban space. Through analysis of how property guardians provide security within a wider remit than typically understood, it underscores guardianships relationship to broader security regimes. In light of its findings, it readdresses the role guardianship plays within the context of urban regeneration and gentrification. Through focusing on guardianship in London, with reference to other U.K. cities, it examines closely at borough-level local authorities use of guardians to further understand the position of guardianship-as-policing within regeneration. As such, it engages with the ways that property guardianship, as with other modes of policing, is concomitant with efforts to reorganise and remake cities. This research builds on previous scholarship within the topic of guardianship, while drawing on work from fields such as urban studies, policing studies and abolitionist thought, as well as reportage, promotional material, and both local and national policy. Through use of interviews and questionnaires, this article centres the experiences of guardians, and their relationship to their duties. It attempts to understand the subjectivities produced and actively sought by such dispersed methods of policing activity, which are undoubtedly reliant partly on the precarity of those enacting them.","PeriodicalId":321208,"journal":{"name":"Radical Housing Journal","volume":"75 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133859497","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Squatting as tactics for creative resistance and transformation: The experience of a Brazilian housing occupation","authors":"J.A.C. Canedo, L. Andrade","doi":"10.54825/ccwq7210","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.54825/ccwq7210","url":null,"abstract":"This paper aims to discuss the processes of resistance and transformation that take place in squats in Brazil and thus shed a light on potential innovative forms of producing and inhabiting the city that emerge from the articulation between inhabitants, social movements, university, activists, and public sectors in these spaces. This work is anchored in the case of a squat in the metropolitan region of Rio de Janeiro, which provides empirical data and engages it in dialogue with the right to the city. The paper proposes to analyze the experience of squatting in Brazil through three different dimensions of potential tactics for transformation: political, urban, and social. It draws from the authors’ years of active engagement with the squat and the accumulated research and teaching experience in the field of informal settlements in Rio de Janeiro. The paper aims to demonstrate that squats can be both seen and used as tactics for transformation which can lead to alternative forms of inhabiting the city that arise from insurgent and collaborative practices.","PeriodicalId":321208,"journal":{"name":"Radical Housing Journal","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128807348","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pandemic demolitions: The unrecognized Bedouin villages in southern Israel and the ongoing housing crisis","authors":"Huda Abu Obaid, Elianne Kremer","doi":"10.54825/enmt7022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.54825/enmt7022","url":null,"abstract":"This Update reports on the continued eviction policy that the State of Israel has been leading towards the Bedouin of the Negev-Naqab, a situation existing since the establishment of the State in 1948 and deepened during the Covid-19 pandemic. The housing crisis for Bedouin indigenous citizens and communities has long been urgent and dire, as the State of Israel continues to deny the existence of thirty-five Bedouin villages that are unrecognized and thus lack basic infrastructure like electricity, sewage services, water connections and garbage disposal. With little access to health services, these communities continue to be transparent on the map and in national statistics. Members of the Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality, an Arab-Jewish organization established in 1997 by Arab and Jewish residents of the Naqab to provide a platform for a joint fight for civil rights equality, detail these historic and ongoing housing injustices, supported by powerful photos from the exhibition Recognized: Life and Resilience captured by Bedouin women.","PeriodicalId":321208,"journal":{"name":"Radical Housing Journal","volume":"129 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116104553","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}