**2.1 Specific housing policies in northern Chile**

In addition to evictions due to irregular occupation of land, it is common for northern city authorities to promote the relocation of informal settlements due to their current location in risk areas, such as riverbeds and sloping areas, all of which are susceptible to landslides and floods. There are also informal settlements located in proximity to critical but high-risk infrastructures, such as high-tension electrical towers and sewage processing plants. Considering that there is a high and growing population residing in informal settlements, authorities recognize the impossibility of evicting without having housing solutions. For this reason, five years ago, a program called transitory neighborhoods was developed. These are territorial units promoted by the state located on public land, which maintain the physical infrastructure of informal settlements, characterized by houses made of light material. Public officials fulfill the role of supervising who can access these neighborhoods, organizing the location of houses and equipment, and mediating conflicts between residents, in addition to managing legal access to basic services, such as electricity and drinking water, something impossible in standard informal settlements.

Authorities explain two purposes for the transitory neighborhoods, meanwhile, it is a program still on a exploratory stage. First, there are neighborhoods seeking to establish themselves as formal housing in the future. For this, a possible purchase of the occupied land is being managed, in addition to contemplating the deployment of housing programs. Second, other neighborhoods are installed as temporary residence spaces for people who want to leave informal settlements and access social housing. People grouped in housing committees circulate here, waiting in the temporary neighborhood until their respective housing complex is built. This contemplates the considerable passage of groupings. For example, our findings record the passage of six housing committees in a single transitory neighborhood in the city of Antofagasta. Although it has been proposed at one time as the solution to the "problem" of informal settlements, transitory neighborhoods maintain the same logic of subsidies and historical housing programs, where to resolve informality, one must access home ownership, without considering that residents may want to explore other forms of tenure. Even for authorities, signing up for a housing committee would be a dead end in terms of residential trajectory. "What are you doing within a housing committee? Because with this you will be tied down for the rest of your life,"

declared an authority from the northern regional housing service. Rental subsidies can also be used by those who wish to move out of informal settlements. However, it is a program that does not consider temporary housing infrastructure to await the results of the application. It is necessary to advance toward providing housing solutions from the idea of shelter, specially for those who live in constant precariousness and under the possibility to remain homeless, in addition to those who do not plan to settle in a particular city.
