Metropolitan and regional geographies of the financialization of housing in Chile (1982-2015): The dream of housing, the nightmare of the debt?

Abstract

Through the process of financialization, neoliberal policies have turned social rights into debt. The Chilean case stands out in Latin American in that sense and it is argued that the early interpenetration of high financeÍ€”with the provision of housingÍ€”constitutes its true originality in addition to the already recognized subsidy to demand. Consequently, the objective of this article is to conduct a socio-spatial analysis of the regional and metropolitan geographies of mortgage debt between 1982 and 2015. For this, a dialectical logic is assumed, that emphasizes the description both in the creation and the adjustments that they have experienced, the mechanisms of financialization of the production of space and housing, as well as the process of massification of increased indebtedness in the period between 2004 and 2015. Finally, it is concluded that this massification corresponds to different subjects of debt and that the process of over-indebtedness raises questions about the possibility of future crises.