COOVIFUDAM: incidence on housing policy from a feminist approach to structural violence

Abstract

The policy incidence process is yet another proof of invisibilization and not recognition of women’s political category as historically and socially constructed, crossed by relations of power, determined by class, gender, racialization (race), nationality, among other intersections (Espinoza, 2010). This article presents a review of collective experiences of the housing cooperative for mutual aid in Costa Rica (COOVIFUDAM RL) never seen before from a feminist perspective. It evidences the violation of basic rights due to exclusion we continue to experiment in public participation spaces, elaboration of housing public policy, and decision making that affect us directly. Housing policies are still partial, assuming habitat as four walls and a roof, without considering differentiated use by gender, crisscrossed by class. The text approaches questions such as: in what way a systematic denial of housing is another form of structural violence? Nonetheless, there are organized spaces that dwellers share as common goods, which are built with tools of struggle to resolve not only access to adequate housing but also the possibility of recognition from other identities, which is the case of cooperative of housing for mutual aid.