“To govern is popular in the sense that popular is to educate, improve, civilize, enrich and grow spontaneously and rapidly”, wrote Juan Bautista Alberdi when Argentina in the 19th century set out with determination to be a promised land for millions of people.
Of course, the current emergencies require solving immediate economic problems, but at the same time it is necessary to do so by thinking about how to project our development throughout Argentina, creating opportunities for everyone everywhere.
For this, a first measure would be the promotion of 100 intermediate and small cities, so that they become a counterweight to AMBA and, based on the explosion of private activity, attract our young people who see opportunities and quality of life in the project future and limit the diaspora of Argentines in the world which today reaches two million compatriots.
The second would be to strengthen our cities of about a million people to become global cities. In this way, we will achieve the scale, specialization and convergence of a network of cities that complement each other and improve all their competitiveness, i.e. their ability to attract investment and retain or attract population and visitors.
Likewise, this system balances and integrates the Buenos Aires metropolitan area, reduces pressure of all kinds and once again leverages the competitiveness of Argentina as a whole, and structures the way we distribute incentives, resources, infrastructure and external and internal migrations.
That is, it’s a strategy with a plan. Today we don’t have an immigration policy, this is serious not only for Argentines but also for men and women of good will who want to live in our country. If we look at Canada, another American country built on immigration, has a migration system that reconciles its development needs with opportunities for immigrants, prioritizing residence permits in the provinces it promotes, and has the need and ability to attract immigration.
In 2009, Lula as president launched the program in Brazil Minha Casa Minha Vida (MCMV) through the Caixa Econômica Federal (CAIXA), Banco Público, with the support of federal funds, which resulted in providing a housing answer to millions of Brazilians, making them owners, and removing many from the informal sector, cashing them in and generating many jobs.
With their differences with the Chilean and Uruguayan systems both in some approaches and fundamentally in scale, we can say that they have the following common characteristics: a system of progressive subsidies, almost total for sanitation or evolutionary housing solutions ranging from the order of 15 to 20% for middle-income complete homes.
Central role of the private sector in competition and by contributing its own capital or taking on the financing, especially in middle sector housing. Role of coordination and centrality of the Public Banks in Brazil and Uruguay and greater role of the private ones in Chile. Articulation with the capital market. This is the system that has delivered reasonable results for our neighbors, and we can learn from its successes and mistakes.
Other measures to apply here would be:
- Repeal the current rental law and allow the more than 100,000 empty housing units to return to the market by providing incentives to rent them, for example by deducting them from the personal property tax base.
- Strengthen the private guarantee system for tenants, with the support of the State or public financial institutions in an increasingly subsidiary way.
- Reduce market intermediation costs and set up a voluntary mediation mechanism, as well as speedy judicial resolution in the event of a serious non-compliance.
- Support the sectors that today do not have access to the formal rental market with a system of subsidies and partial guarantees.
Source: Clarin
