After a dirty campaign against Juan Grabois and the former Secretary of Socio-Urban Integration, Fernanda Miño, President Javier Milei reduced by decree the financing of the FISU (Socio-Urban Integration Fund), which will now receive only 0 from 9 percent of the PAIS tax. .3 percent. The media addicted to the government had been making a crude advance: they accused Grabois and Miño of keeping “the cash” of the urbanization of popular neighborhoods, although they did not present a single piece of data to support that accusation and they ended up being denied by the official who La Libertad Avanza appointed as the new head of the area. But although the operetta fell, the government moved forward with the cut. Due to the reduction, the public works that were being carried out in popular neighborhoods will be interrupted, reduced to a minimum.. And ones twenty thousand workers -cooperatives formed with residents of the neighborhoods themselves, with women working on the construction sites and incomes similar to market salaries for construction- They will lose their job continuity.
The decree was published this Monday in the Official Gazette with the signatures of Milei, the Chief of Staff Nicolás Posse and the Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo, which in less than one page and without arguing – the text only says that the Ministry of Economy is empowered to do so – dismantled the socio-urban integration plan. It is the most advanced social policy that Argentina had.
The Socio-urban Integration program was created with two objectives: to improve the living conditions of popular neighborhoods and to do so by generating work intensively.
Their works bring to popular neighborhoods public services that these territories do not have: drinking water connections, safe electricity installations (to avoid fires, so frequent in precarious housing), sidewalks, wet areas (kitchen plus bathroom), sewers. , housing improvements, squares.
Regarding job creation, with the policy of favoring the intensive use of labor, 20 thousand residents of the neighborhoods themselves, according to SISU estimates, worked in these urban improvements. 10 percent of the country’s population lives in popular neighborhoods, so the works that remain to be done are not few.
Below are some keys about the plan that Milei has just defunded.
Where did the SISU come from?
The program was created in 2018 by a law of Congress (27,453), which was approved by unanimitywith the support of the ruling party and the opposition blocs. The norm established that 25 percent of the works had to be done by residents of the neighborhoods themselves.
That is why social movements participated in the works, which were also organized by the municipalities and governorates.
What did the dirty campaign say?
“He spent 480 billion pesos and only finished 6 percent of the works (LN+); “Three curbs were made” (LN+); “This is neither more nor less than the routes of Lázaro Báez (… ) say that they work for the poor and exploit them, like Milagro Sala and like the people of Sueños Compartidos” (Luis Majul); “The fund managed by Juan Grabois spent 130 million in travel expenses and commissions” (Clarín); “The government understands which is a ‘black box’ that has little or no controls” (Infobae).
However, after several days of campaigning, the current head of the SISU, Sebastian Parejaappointed by the Milei government to replace Miño, He clarified that he had found no irregularities. “What’s more: if it was not the only secretariat that functioned during Alberto Fernández’s government, it hits home. What I am seeing is that it has 1,200 works and 80 percent of the budget has been executed. The IDB promotes it as an example“I can’t imagine the IDB supporting a policy of corruption.” The secretary added that the funds have many controls and that he doesn’t have “any data in sight to file a criminal complaint.”
Who did the works reach?
To the homes in the popular neighborhoods that the State registered in Renabap (today 6,467 industrial estates are recognized, where more than 5 million people live, more than 10 percent of Argentines). On this point it is worth keeping in mind that since the dictatorship of ’76 in Argentina, popular lots were stopped. The generations of our grandparents or great-grandparents, with a salary, could buy land in installments, but that path has been closed for 50 years. One of its consequences is that the main means of access to housing for the subaltern classes became occupations. The seizures advanced on unsaleable land, despised by the market, floodable, without water or sewers, on which the neighborhoods grew. When the socio-urban integration program began, 90 percent of the census homes did not have drinking water.
About the dollar tax
The urbanization proposal, although sanctioned during the presidency of Mauricio Macri, was not financed by the Cambiemos government. It accessed some lines of international financing, from the IDB, and only with the arrival at the Casa Rosada of the Frente de Todos did it begin to have resources on a scale. In 2020, the Socio-Urban Integration Fund was created, to which 9 percent of the tax on the purchase of savings dollars (or PAIS dollar) was granted.. The following year, FISU received a portion (15 percent) of the tax on large fortunes (charged only once during the pandemic) that allowed urbanization to take a leap. Of making sidewalks or curbs, it was possible to think of tackle large works, such as sewers.
As seen in the table on FISU financing, in 2021 the tax on large fortunes had great weight in the budget to urbanize popular neighborhoods, and then the income from the 9% tax on the purchase of goods became key. dollars, which is what has now been cut.
According to Habitar Argentina’s estimate, the reduction will mean that of every 100 works that were going to be done in popular neighborhoods, only 10 will be able to be completed.
Last December, the SISU gave a public accounting of its work. It was in the UBA Faculty of Economics, in a day open to the public. Many of the data in this note come from that surrender. On the other hand, on the web there is a Monitor of Socio-Urban Integration workswith open data.
What does the SISU put at stake?
A little visible point of the changes that the program implied is that it reversed the logic of public works aimed at those who have the least. Because before this plan, the State only financed the arrival of public services – water, the opening of streets, electricity – to settlements on land owned by the State.which are 20 percent of the existing ones, or to homes that have gone through a property regularization process, which is very slow, between 15 and 20 years.
Another change is linked to the creation of a new public works modelin which neighborhoods are organized. The community becomes more powerful than the market. The model of socio-urban integration thus comes into tension with the logic of public works destined for contracting companies, although not to the same extent. The truth is that the private sector does not have much interest in getting involved in carrying out works in neighborhoods with high levels of violence, where overcrowding and a lot of internal problems complicate the tasks to be carried out. The greatest tension seems to occur with the idea of a State that recognizes rights to its citizens, with the very concept of citizen; with the modern imaginary in which the idea of citizenship went hand in hand with ideals of equality and justice.
