In Uruguay, thousands of families build their own homes as cooperatives
A 1968 housing law in Uruguay allowed collective ownership and mutual-aid cooperatives: families put in hours of building work and the state lends most of the cost. Their federation, FUCVAM, had some 730 cooperatives in 2023. The caveat: the pace of building depends on what each government funds.
Each family puts in at least 21 hours of building work a week. That is how homes go up in Uruguay’s mutual-aid housing cooperatives, Isabel Zerboni, vice-president of their federation, FUCVAM, told El Salto in 2023. The caveat comes in the same interview: the public loan the building depends on “depends on who is in government”, and of the 80 sites they once had running at the same time, 14 were left.
A 1968 law and a home shared by all
Uruguay’s 1968 National Housing Law (Law 13,728) recognised housing as a right and allowed collective ownership. In these cooperatives, the home belongs to the cooperative, and each family has the right to live in its own.
Building hours that cut the cost
According to Zerboni, mutual aid saves about 15% of the value of the home. The state lends 75% of the total cost, repaid over 25 years. Some cooperatives have gone as far as 40 hours of work per family a week.
From one neighbourhood to the whole country
FUCVAM brings together some 730 cooperatives and more than 35,000 families, according to the figures the federation gave in 2023. 550 have already built their homes; the rest are under construction or being formed. In Montevideo, complexes such as Mesa 1, pictured above, are rows of low brick houses with their own gardens.
FUCVAM’s headquarters in Montevideo, with a mural marking 50 years of the housing law. Photo: BiblioJu · Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
“You don’t just build your house, you also build community, a neighbourhood and emotional bonds,” says Zerboni.
Why this is good news
For more than half a century, thousands of Uruguayan families have got a home through their own work and a long-term public loan. This is the third stop on our 11 November housing special.
