The neverending house

Access to affordable, stable, and dignified housing is a major challenge worldwide, affecting both wealthy cities and struggling areas. According to the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), over 2.8 billion people—about 35% of the global population—lack adequate housing. This crisis is driven by rising rents that outpace wage growth, declining homeownership among younger generations, and the displacement caused by real estate speculation. The issue is not new; in 1872, philosopher Friedrich Engels highlighted housing as a structural problem of industrial capitalism, arguing that neither markets nor governments could adequately provide shelter for all workers. Over time, governments in developed countries attempted to address housing through public construction, subsidies, and mortgage systems, but today, the crisis has worsened, with housing increasingly tied to financial speculation rather than basic human needs.

In many rapidly urbanizing cities across Latin America, Africa, and Asia, governments were unable to keep up with housing demand. As a result, millions of people gained access to shelter not through formal housing programs but by occupying land and building homes themselves, often by hand. These self-built neighborhoods were not exceptions but central to how these cities developed. While this process may seem informal or precarious, it reveals how housing is more than just a physical structure—it is deeply tied to daily life, family bonds, and community. For example, in Santiago, Chile, much of the city’s growth between the 1960s and 1980s came from informal land occupation, later regularized by the state. These neighborhoods were built collectively over generations, shaping not just houses but also streets, public spaces, and local social and political structures.

Victoria, a retired domestic worker in Santiago, spent her life building and expanding her home from scratch on bare earth. Over decades, she and her husband added rooms, raised floors, and improved walls, often using small amounts of cement or metal sheets at a time. Her house became a living record of her family’s growth, housing four generations at its peak. Victoria’s story, studied over 20 years by an anthropologist, shows how self-built homes are never truly finished. They evolve with the family’s needs—adding space for new children, grandchildren, or relatives in need. Yet this flexibility has limits; overcrowding and unfinished projects, like her long-dreamed terrace, also brought frustration. Her home embodied both shelter and struggle, reflecting how houses shape—and are shaped by—family relationships.

The article contrasts two ways of understanding housing: as a technical object (a finished product) versus as a process of dwelling (a lived experience). In many modern cities, houses are built quickly and sold as complete units, designed for efficiency rather than long-term use. Philosopher Martin Heidegger argued in his 1951 essay ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’ that this approach misses the deeper meaning of housing. He claimed that dwelling—the act of living meaningfully in a place—comes before building. The German word bauen, meaning ‘to build,’ originally meant ‘to remain in a place,’ showing that building is rooted in the act of dwelling. Self-built homes, like Victoria’s, reflect this idea: they grow slowly alongside the lives of their inhabitants, adapting to changes in family, finances, and needs. In contrast, Chile’s official social housing program since the 1980s delivers viviendas definitivas (‘definitive houses’) as one-time, standardized units, leaving little room for future changes.

In self-built neighborhoods, houses are more than just shelter—they are central to family and community life. Materials, labor, and space are shared among relatives, reinforcing bonds. For example, Victoria once asked her son-in-law for cement to build a wall, but he refused, symbolically rejecting both the material help and the family relationship. This shows how housing is intertwined with social obligations. In these communities, overcrowding is often understood not as a problem but as a sign of support, where multiple generations live together under one roof. The house becomes a physical record of kinship, where walls, rooms, and repairs tell the story of a family’s history. This stands in contrast to formal housing programs, where houses are delivered as finished products, disconnected from the social fabric that sustains them.