**2.2 Housing policies and real estate as drivers of disaster risk**

While we have referred to hazard exposure in informal territories, our findings in northern cities show that there is formal housing for high-income groups also settled in areas with tsunamis, floods, or landslides hazards. However, contrary to the situation of the informal territories, it is common for the exposure of high-income groups to be accepted, as they would have sufficient resources to face and overcome a disaster. This would explain the constant construction of private housing in contraindicated urban sectors, although it is worth wondering if people with lower incomes are actually living in safe areas. Some authors have identified the tendency in northern Chile to build social housing near risk areas [12, 30, 31]. Yet we would like to expose a particular example observed in the city of Antofagasta where informal territories, the construction of social housing, and the risk of disaster overlap.

After Santiago, Antofagasta is the second most expensive city to reside in Chile. On its surface, there are different types of housing with differentiated values according to square meters and number of rooms. Given the difficulties of buying a home due to its high value, renting is consolidated as one of the main forms of tenure, however, its monthly values can reach USD \$630 for a 45 m2 apartment, meanwhile, renting a 3-bedroom house can cost USD \$1056. This is also exacerbated by the social geography of the city, where rental values change according to location and accessibility to goods and services. As a result of these restrictions on access to housing for ownership, rent, or even sublease, some families see in peripheries an opportunity to self-build their houses. In terms of disaster risk, peripheral informal settlements are exposed to countless hazards given their location in the western part of the coastal mountain range, an area determined by a steep slope that is highly susceptible to floods and landslides [32]. Furthermore, any house that is built in this area must consider historical disaster events. The last significant episode was a mudflow that affected the whole city of Antofagasta in 1991, triggered by an intense rainfall that activated dry creeks, registering 92 fatalities and 16 missing people [32]. Despite this, these are areas where, in addition to informal settlements, the state has built social housing for vulnerable groups. There is a remarkable example of Altos del Arenal building, a social housing project developed in 2018.

Located in the northern area of the city of Antofagasta, Altos del Arenal is a social housing complex evaluated and approved by the regional housing and urbanization service (known as SERVIU), which allowed the construction of 50 apartments of 62 m2 , producing a six-floor tall building. Prior to its construction, it was defined that its residents would be some families living in Los Arenales, one of the largest informal settlements in the city. Candidates for relocation had to register in the overcoming camps program of the Ministry of Housing and Urbanism and apply for a housing subsidy to buy the apartments. However, as **Figures 1** and **2** show, the social housing complex was placed in the rear sector of Los Arenales, an informal settlement under

*Mobile Housing as an Initial Proposal to Manage Informal Territories Exposed to Disaster Risks DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108828*

**Figure 1.** *Altos del Arenal social housing complex, Antofagasta. Source. Authors.*

## **Figure 2.**

*Susceptibility to mass removal, altos del Arenal social housing complex, Antofagasta. Source. Authors.*

constant risk of eviction. Likewise, it is an area under high susceptibility to landslides, in addition to historical mudflow records.

From this, state's decision to build social housing in risk areas, **Figures 1** and **2** above, expose some challenges to face. First, it is necessary to rethink the scale of disaster risk and its link with territorial planning instruments. In Antofagasta, the current urban regulatory plan was created 20 years ago, requiring it to be updated especially in risk issues, since zoning depends on hazard exposure studies, which have not been properly developed. And second, it is also necessary to investigate the exposure to anthropic hazards, such as proximity to dumps, the presence of pests, and pollutants, among others, as an exercise to begin unraveling the sociopolitical construction of risk in informal territories.
