Houses for people

Fr Jorge Anzorena lives and breathes houses. For 35 years he has travelled through Asia, Africa and Latin America, engaging with people who are homeless. He brings with him his ears: he listens to the people he visits and passes on the good things that other groups are doing.

Born in Argentina and working as a Jesuit in the Japanese Province, Jorge began his life’s path in the Tertianship. He had gained a doctorate in architecture in order to teach. As he travelled through India, he saw what Mother Theresa was doing in Calcutta.

‘Seeing so many people dying in the streets’, he explains, ‘I understood that my doctorate would not help them. So I began to look for a way to be involved with so many homeless, even if I continued to be a full time professor at Sophia University.’

At that time the regional office for the Jesuits in East Asia (then the Bureau of Asian Affairs) wanted to promote housing for the poor in Asia. Jorge asked if he could help, and was invited to Manila where he visited slums and projects. After a number of meetings, the Office for Human Development of the Asian Bishops asked the Provincial of Japan to release him for this work in Asia.

Jorge continues, ‘The Provincial and the university agreed to release me, initially for two years, and I began going to different places looking for people who were doing something interesting for shelter for the poor. The two years stretched to over 30 years. For a long time I would travel for half of the year, and teach in Japan for the other half of the year.’

Jorge's Way

He soon found his own way of working. He describes it like this: ‘Each time I visited a project and found an interesting approach or idea, I would write up what I observed and send that information on to the other groups I had visited. It is such a simple method. Checking the best initiatives that I found, and people’s desires, I would let others share both the information and the inspiration I had received.’

As he visited people, he linked them together. Communities began to meet and develop common strategies. In this way, the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights, which now has hundreds of communities as members, was born.

Linked communities could organise and push governments to respect their basic human rights. But this was not easy. In the 1970s, the poor were often evicted from their dwellings. Jorge recalls, ‘In Tondo, Manila after a long struggle thousands of families could remain in their sites. But in Indonesia and Malaysia the movement was crushed.

‘Defending the rights of the urban poor was a subversive activity and suppressed violently. In Thailand the military declared contact with squatters illegal. In South Korea, many were persecuted for organising the poor. At the time Fr J V Daly and his companion Paul Jeong Ku Je were living in the slums. They too were evicted. Fr Daly stayed fasting and praying with the people who resisted eviction.’

Learning From One Another

Even so, ideas and projects multiplied, and those that worked were brought from one continent to another. From El Salvador, for example, came projects for large scale housing projects to which the poor could contribute their labour. The project was so successful in Thailand that the government authorities supported it.

Community groups in the Philippines identified a problem facing the poor: the high price of land. One third of the population in large cities were squatters, but they could not buy land. A solution was to organise credit for people to buy cheaper land beyond the hills, where they could build houses. The government later funded the project.

Groups in Karachi pioneered ways of allowing communities to provide sewerage for themselves. In Africa groups cooperated to form Federations. These eventually grew into the umbrella organization Slum Dwellers International, which spread quickly through Africa.

These are just some projects in which Jorge has had a modest part through meeting, listening to, and sharing with people. He has also worked with many effective Jesuit organisations. He sees the way of the future to lie in cooperating, and says, ‘Today the world wide problems are too big for us and for our institutions. We need to collaborate and support the work of the people of good will. The basic approach of this housing project has been to find these creative and committed people, to support and network them.’

A Life's Work

In 1995, Jorge received the 1994 Ramon Magsaysay Award for international understanding, and for devoting himself to the wrenching human dilemma of the millions of people in the cities of Asia today who lack a decent home.

As he looks back over his life, he concludes, ‘Over the past 35 years I have rejoiced to witness the creation of powerful grass roots movements from the bottom up. The urban poor, whose problems seem too complex to touch, have been willing to change their approach, ready to incorporate the people with ideas, and little by little big things have been done.’