#but when it works

[hmantegazzi]

hi! i think you meant well but also i don’t think it’s realistic that the renovated warehouses are anywhere near as accessible to homeless people as you’ve suggested. any housing of the homeless project is the EXCEPTION 9.9/10 times the renovated places are not accessible and exclusively marketed towards people of higher class. it is a fact that real estate developers have the interest of the market, not the general people in mind

also,, housing projects are almost always government funded while re developed d warehouses and the like are renovated by private companies who are only for profit. I think you also made quite a few assumptions in your line of thinking as well .

Sure enough, the exercise was to make *different* assumptions, while keeping them realistic, to show that there are more than two possible alternatives: market-oriented development that ends in gentrification and a fragile status quo.

Given that we aren't talking about a concrete case, I cannot say for sure what would be the most credible way to campaign for some sort of social housing, and just mentioned alternatives that I know have been tried successfully in cities around the world, but I guess that showcasing at least one of those concrete cases could drive the point more clearly.

This photo is super fun because it showcases how weird this whole housing project is, so I wanted to put it even before showing what it's about. The guy in the middle with the big carboard key is Felipe Ward, a far-right Chilean politician that was Minister of Housing and Urbanism in 2020, and most of the people surrounding him are members of a radical left-libertarian homeless activist movement called Ukamau, who were receiving their newly built apartments in a warehouse district in Santiago, a housing complex that they don't only fought for but literally helped to design, and the right-wing government had no other option than to follow through, finance and built it.

The place on which the project was built was a corner of the San Eugenio railyard, the main maintenance workshop for the trains serving the city, which was already under heavy stress because of dual plans to expand commuter rail operations from the neighbouring station (I should write about that some day!), and to sell to private businesses and redevelop parts of the lot that were in disuse, to help finance the aforementioned expansion. Their bet was to ride the wave of gentrification caused by the construction of the Line 6 of the Metro across the southern side of the railyard (which ultimately was displaced about half a kilometre more to the south, to a more populated avenue).

The Ukamau movement, formed in 2011 on the basis of many organisations that went back as far as 1987 anti-dictatorship fighters, and comprised of 'pobladores' (people that occupied empty plots of land and built precarious sheds there) and 'allegados' (people that live precariously in spare rooms of neighbours or family), decided to make their bet on the railyard plot, under the premise of building there a project that actually satisfied the needs of their inhabitants without requiring them to migrate to the periphery of the city, which is where most social building development was happening at the time. The proposal was soundly rejected on the basis that the space was required for the trains, but they insisted, for years, facing continuous acts of repression by the police every time they protested the decision.

Meanwhile, in the same neighbourhood surrounding the Central Station of the city, huge apartment towers with terrible building standards started to be constructed, abusing a legal loop, so that some towers are comprised of cruelly tiny apartments of 21 sq metres and have no access to sunlight at all:

The contrast between this monstrous prison-like buildings that were being sold as an "investment" for prospective landlords and the proposal of Ukamau made the latter more palatable every time the first protagonised the news because of the inherent clash with their environment, and lately, because of the living conditions of their residents.

One of the key ingredients of their success is that Ukamau didn't just demanded housing, but presented a concrete project to be built, something that was aided by their early collaboration with the architect Fernando Castillo Velasco (I really have to write about him as well!), one of the biggest figures of the modernist movement in the country and lately famous for his "communities", little collective housing projects designed and built for his students and friends. Even if Castillo died in 2013, just a few meetings after their initial encounter, his son Cristián, also architect and a former member of the Revolutionary Left Movement that fought the dictatorship on its earliest days in clandestinity, took the post under the same premise: letting the future residents have the last word on the design of their residences and their environment.

Aided by the government change in 2014, Ukamau and their architects managed to convince the Ministry of obtaining the plot from the State Railway Company (EFE), granting their members funding of the order of 38,000 USD (of the time) per family, and letting the movement act as the main contractor of the building process to control the assigned times, let their members work in some of the stages of the construction, and reinvest the profits into the provision of community amenities and the fabrication of furniture. This, of course, meant as well that EFE had to absorb the extra costs of not counting with the space in their railyard anymore (which is being a little of an issue right now).

Their project was presented in 2016, comprises 424 apartments, and looked like this:

Even then, the construction process wasn't without their complications: in one episode in 2019, the company tasked with the main edification works tried to delay their deadline talking directly with the Ministry (now in hands of the right-wing government elected in 2017), and instead of getting themselves trapped in a legal battle, the members of Ukamau went and occupied the central offices of the Ministry to demand the full compilance with the original terms.

Eventually, in october of 2020, just days after the first anniversary of the Estallido Social protests, the Maestranza Ukamau Neighbourhood was finally received by their residents, and it looks like this (you might notice that the colour palette is obviously their favourite):

But maybe the most important result of this project was that it proved that such a thing was possible to do. It didn't require lengthy legislative discussions or the full attention of a government, just a very clever strategy, tons of decision and insistence by an organised movement, and a bit of help from people in the know. So successful was this model that, by the end of 2021, twenty housing projects modelled after this one were already being presented for financing and construction.

[epoxyconfetti]

[roseworth]

i think theres this idea in the general public that the "best" fanfic gets turned into real books like 50 shades of grey. but the truth is that the best fanfic can never be published as an actual book because its intricately woven into the canon material so its inseparable even if you change the names

[bookpdf]

there should be more hours between 6 and 10pm. like even just two more hours. for my assorted hobbies & activities

[anartificialsatellite]

The older I get the more I admire people who are earnestly, genuinely into whatever their thing is. I know it sounds like an annoying cliche but unless you're being cruel or hurtful there is really no need to be normal about things. The dude with the bad fake accent at the renaissance faire is having the time of his life. The people having photoshoots with their fashion dolls are loving it. The old lady with a yard unreasonably full of tacky ass lawn ornaments is having a blast, HOA be damned.

Don't waste your time being too cool to have fun, y'know?

[bajoop-sheeb]

PLEASE for the love of the universe read anti-colonial science fiction and fantasy written from marginalized perspectives. Y’all (you know who you are) are killing me. To see people praise books about empire written exclusively by white women and then turn around and say you don’t know who Octavia Butler is or that you haven’t read any NK Jemisin just kills me! I’m not saying you HAVE to enjoy specific books but there is such an obvious pattern here

Some of y’all love marginalized stories but you don’t give a fuck about marginalized creators and characters, and it shows. Like damn

[valtsv]

being someone who's passionate about their interests when you're a horror fan really is a special layer of hell because every interaction you have with another person where the conversation turns to your hobbies and personal entertainments is a trial where if you show too much unrepentant glee at getting an opportunity to talk about your preferred subject you get to watch them mentally move you onto their list of untrustworthy individuals to avoid in the future in real time

[doom-dreaming]

"when i was your age, i was working three jobs to help support my family" and "when i was in college i was sleeping on a mattress on the floor and living off of soup"

YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE HAD TO DO THAT. NO ONE SHOULD HAVE TO DO THAT. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO EXPLAIN TO YOU THAT THIS ISN'T A CHARACTER-BUILDING LESSON, IT'S JUST BAD

[charlesoberonn]

[sticksandsharks]

Egret Nurse

design from The Wildercourt (a graphic novel I am working on and hope to have finished in 2025)

[larkiethings]

shaking my head while playing neko atsume so people know that I don’t support outdoor cats

[illusioncanthurtme--art]

Physically? I am sitting in my bedroom. Mentally? Spiritually? I AM DEAD ON THE FLOOR!!!!! THESE TWO HAVE KILLED ME!!!!

(Another drawing! This was originally attempt #1 at drawing stan, and then fiddleford just showed up. Kinda feels like them five minutes after the above acting like nothing happened though, so it works sdjkgkjfshj)

[ahotknife]

the thing is that childhood doesn't just end when you turn 18 or when you turn 21. it's going to end dozens of times over. your childhood pet will die. actors you loved in movies you watched as a kid will die. your grandparents will die, and then your parents will die. it's going to end dozens and dozens of times and all you can do is let it. all you can do is stand in the middle of the grocery store and stare at freezers full of microwave pizza because you've suddenly been seized by the memory of what it felt like to have a pizza party on the last day of school before summer break. which is another ending in and of itself

[thatrandomblogsays]

Annabeth: I, a child, had to earn Thalia’s love, that’s how the world works! I have to earn my moms love. Love is transactional, you gotta be worthy of it first silly :)

Percy, listening to this on the train

[teaboot]

If I can recommend you do 1 low-effort thing for the love of God it is this:

Keep 5 cards in your pocket. One will say "yes", the second will say "no."

If you lose your voice, or lose speech, or want to make a dramatic embellishment at the right time, it is an elegant and efficient solution that is right there at hand.

But what if people question you from there? "Why do you have that card? Why would you do this? How long have you had that in your pocket?" For this, or whatever else they say, the third card: "I don't have a card for that."

"What the fuck," they ask. They laugh. They are bemused. You bring the energy back down with the fourth card: "I have laryngitis. I've lost speech. My throat hurts". Whatever you expect to occur.

The joke is over. Rule of threes. Now they are curious. They wonder about logistics. "How did you know I would say that? Is everyone so predictable?"

As a three-part bit, nobody ever sees the fifth card coming.

"I have powerful wizard magics."

Gets them every time

[whatbigotspost]

I need y’all to understand that every time that somebody who makes $10,000 a year thinks that somebody who makes $30,000 a year thinks that somebody who makes $50,000 a year thinks that somebody who makes $100,000 a year thinks that YES EVEN somebody who makes $150,000 a year is the real enemy

…a billionaire wins and we all lose.

And every time that somebody who makes $150,000 a year thinks that they’re better than somebody else who makes $100,000 a year thinks that they’re better than somebody else who makes $50,000 a year thinks that they’re better than somebody else who makes $30,000 a year thinks that they’re better than somebody else who makes $10,000 a year

…a billionaire wins and we all lose.

Privilege and comfort rises with income, obvi. It’s not all “the same.” But please zoom the fuck out and look at the whole picture. The WHOLE picture.