Chile Slum Families Get New Lease on Life

Elida Mansilla is proud of the neat little apartment she lives in, after the cardboard and wooden shack she inhabited for years in one of Santiago’s poorest slums. But the change doesn’t mean that she no longer has to fight for a better life, the mother of three says.

She is one of the pioneers of Chile Barrio, a year-old government program to move more than 500,000 people from 972 slums throughout the country into small but solid new buildings. The goal is to clear out all the slums by 2003.

The program, however, faces a major problem: Families remain as poor in their new apartments as they were in the slums, but now they have financial obligations they didn’t know before.

In the slums, they cooked with firewood and survived without running water, electricity, sewers. After the move, they have all those services, but they also get the bills.

Both the government and the former slum dwellers say that problem must be tackled if the program is to succeed.

The government is requiring candidates for the new homes to complete job training that will allow them to increase the meager income that kept them in the slums.

The residents are organizing in neighborhood associations “We organize to educate people to live in real houses and with real services and not to waste them,” said Patricia Rojas, president of the association in Cerrillos, a sprawling suburb just west of Santiago.

She said women are being given training so they can find jobs when their husbands are unemployed--a common occurrence. “By doing this, we make sure we will not lose the houses we have struggled so hard to get,” Rojas said. “We cannot accept people losing them simply because they can’t pay their water or electricity bills.”

Some families have had electricity and water cut off at their new homes for lack of payment.

It is a hard fight for families who must survive on small, occasional wages to save the initial deposit of 290,000 pesos ($620) that opens the door to a new house under the government program.

Mansilla, for example, is learning to be a dressmaker so she can supplement the $190 a month she receives from her former husband.

The Mansillas were one of 301 families that recently moved to the small but neat apartments in Cerrillos, in an area that includes paved streets and even a playground for children.

Chile Barrio aids families who haven’t saved enough to qualify for a new apartment, providing them with tools and construction materials to improve their huts until their time comes to move.

Gabriela Rubilar, a social worker for the program, said money is also being invested in community improvements, such as nurseries, where some women take turns caring for children so others can go to work.

During its first year, Chile Barrio has found that women are more enthusiastic and constant than men, especially when it comes to learning new trades, social workers say. Many women are training as electricians and plumbers.