A group of residents of the popular neighborhood Ramón Carrillo, located in the south of the city of Buenos Aires, presented a bill in the Buenos Aires Legislature that seeks to “correct” the lack of basic services and achieve “definitive housing solutions.”
The initiative entered the local Parliament on Monday and will be accompanied by the legislator of the Frente de Todos Magdalena Tiesso.
Ramón Carrillo is located in Villa Soldatibetween Mariano Acosta street, Castañares avenue and the Cámpora highway, on lands that were part of “La Quema”, an open-air dump that operated until 1978.
In the foundations of the project, the neighbors explained that the neighborhood was originally a housing complex built in “only nine months” to receive, in December 1990, the 645 families who lived in the abandoned buildings of the Warnes Shelter, which was in La Paternal and was demolished in March 1991.
The current problems of the neighborhood are related to its origins, since it was built quickly, without planning and on highly contaminated land.
The neighbors also explained that when building the housing complex there were no projections about the possible increase of this neighborhood, which they estimate at 80% from 1990 to today.
About the bill
The project foresees the intervention of the neighbors in the redevelopment through a “participatory management table”, and establishes a series of stages, such as the subdivision and consolidation of the blocks, the construction of new houses, the opening of streets and passages, the installation of basic services infrastructure (drinking water, electricity, sewage, storm drains, public lighting network and natural gas), improvement of existing homes and home connection to services.
“This project comes to settle a pending debt with the neighborhood for more than 30 years, in which, it is worth mentioning, our neighborhood struggle never ceased”the neighbors wrote in the foundations.
And they recalled that as a result of that struggle, in 2004, Law 1,333 was passed, which declared the infrastructure emergency in the neighborhood and ordered the Government of the city of Buenos Aires to carry out works, “but not including intra-domiciliary connections.”
They also mentioned that there is a court ruling that orders the Buenos Aires government to “immediately comply with said law.”
The project is signed by 22 neighbors, including Olga Amador, who also initiated the legal case so that the Buenos Aires Executive complies with Law 1,333.
In 2019 the Legislature approved in first reading an urbanization law that reached several popular neighborhoods of Villa Soldati, but the text did not receive the second and definitive sanction.
