Paper short abstract:

This paper aims at exploring the nexus between housing policy, home and vulnerability through the case study of the PER (Programa Especial de Realojamento, or Special Housing Programme).

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims at exploring the nexus between housing policy, home and vulnerability through the case study of the PER.

The PER was launched in 1993 to eradicate slums in the metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Porto - which the its legislation defined as "a scourge still open in our social fabric". The PER therefore aimed at rehousing almost 50,000 households, while at the same time boosting a stagnating construction sector.

The urgency of the problem was widely recognised at the time; however, several problematic aspects of the PER were highlighted before its implementation (with academics noting that "people are not things you put into drawers", Guerra 1994), as well as in studies published later (highlighting the residents' "satisfaction with the house/dissatisfaction with the neighbourhood", see e.g. Guerra 1999). Indeed, many tension points emerged over time: the definition of slums through sanitary language; the problematic use of census data; the top-down mechanisms of implementation; and the consciousness over the negative externalities associated to large scale rehousing policies (Tulumello et al. 2018).

This paper ethnographically illustrates how the PER's design and implementation were reflected in the residents' experience, showing how the programme succeeded in providing new homes, but often failed in addressing the condition of vulnerability associated with living in informal neighbourhoods. To illustrate the residents' experience, this paper presents material from an ongoing ethnographical research in Alta de Lisboa and Cascais, in the context of the project exPERts (www.expertsproject.org).