Comenticios

We had some rain today, and Emilio’s road was impassable. Instead, we went to work on another Habitat Project – related to ‘Comenticios’. I was thrilled with the idea since we would be working inside (out of the sun). It was apparently up to 34 degrees the other day! Our day was spent painting rooms and halls..

oops - missed a spot...

Lunch Break

Comenticios are another interesting situation related to housing in BA. Here is the background.

To rent a ‘formal’ apartment in BA, you need to have a guarantee. This guarantee can be in the form of land ownership (by yourself or your parents), or else a reference from a previous landlord to confirm that you have been a good tenant in a ‘formal’ apartment for a minimum of 2 years. The problem is when you or your parents do not own land (if you did, why would you want an apartment…), it is impossible to rent a ‘formal’ apartment at all, since you have not rented a ‘formal’ apartment – a classic catch-22.

So…. If you need to live in town to avoid the 2-3 hour commute by bus (each way), you turn to ‘comenticios’ – which are basically rooming houses. You and your family rent a room, and share the bathroom and kitchen with all the other families in the building.

 

View of the Boca Juniors Stadium from the apartment

Both the comenticios and formal apartments are legal, but where the apartments are regulated for price and quality, the comenticios are not. Throw in a little (or a lot) of greed, combine that with families who have no other options, and you have a very large number of people living in places that are falling apart, filthy, and prone to fires due to the poor wiring, etc… What really amazed me, though, was that the price for comenticios and formal apartments are approximately the same.

Another view - someone lives here behind that door

...and someone lives here as well.

Habitat Argentina staff said that there were a lot of unique situations in Argentina, and they had to come up with some unique solutions. This was one of them.

So… they bought a comenticio house that was empty, levelled it, and built a new structure. The new five-story house has 10 apartments in it – holding the same number of families that were in the old 2-story comenticio. Each apartment has 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, a kitchen, and a small patio.

The plan for these rental units are to bring qualified families in for a period of two years, then give them the ‘reference’ they require to be able to rent in a ‘formal’ apartment at approximately the same price as they were paying for the comenticio room. Essentially, offering them a way out of their catch-22.

The new house

There were a lot of ‘learning experiences’ in this initiative:
1)      The comenticio was in La Boca – which is very unique neighbourhood. More than a bit rough, and with lots of history. It is well known for the brightly coloured houses, which came from the fact that most residents worked at the Port area, and painted their homes with whatever leftover paint they found from ships. It was challenging to change the way of doing business in this very insular area.
2)      They had to bring about legislative changes to bridge the gap between the comenticio designation and the rental guarantee.
3)      They had to modify what parts of the building were done by volunteers. Apparently, bypassing the masons union is OK out in the backwoods of La Matanza, but the high-profile neighbourhood of La Boca is an entirely different matter.

Although it is still a work-in-progress, there are 4 families now in the brightly-painted rental units – on their way to getting their guarantee for ‘formal’ apartments.