ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how one family succeeds in building and improving their house over a period of 26 years. It tells the story of the Ramirez family’s search for shelter; this story was used on a United Nations poster to illustrate the struggle of a family of recent rural migrants to find a home in a large metropolis. The chapter illustrates the kinds of political, environmental, cultural and economic problems that the family had to overcome. After 20 years of struggle and the loss of one of their children (who died after drinking contaminated water), the Ramirez family finally obtained their goal of a conventional house in a legal urban development with basic services. As one householder in the squatter settlement Brasilia Teimosa said, “the value of the house — 26 years’ struggle”.
