On 4 September the Chilean people will vote on the text of a new constitution. The new constitution will replace the 1980 Constitution, designed by the dictatorship of General Pinochet.
After the social outburst in October 2019, 80% of Chileans expressed in a plebiscite their desire for a new constitutional text, the draft of which was relegated to a Constitutional Convention whose members were to be directly elected and meet conditions of gender parity and reserved seats for indigenous peoples.
The constitutional text proposed by the Constitutional Convention establishes principles, rights, duties and institutions for better coexistence between people, regions, society and nature, on whose environmental goods and services we depend.
The Right to Housing and the Right to the City: an opportunity in the new Constitution
Among others, the new Constitution includes the Right to Housing and the Right to the City. The conquest of these rights is the basis of all social struggles. In a context in which the majority of inhabitants are being evicted from their homes, with rising rental prices in the cities, and a financialisation of housing, the New Chilean Constitution emerges as an opportunity to protect these human rights.
Chile is moving forward in this sense, an exciting historical political experience, which hopes to approve and implement this constitution towards decent housing for all people, in accordance with international treaties and human rights conventions.
Urban planners and international leaders are advocating for the inclusion of the right to housing and the right to the city in the New Constitution:
Statement by 242 urban planners on the right to housing in the new constitution
