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Although the practice of shared lodging, for the vast majority of cases within the family, has been noted in almost all working-class neighbourhoods in Southern metropolises, research on housing and residential dynamics has in fact ignored this aspect of urban life. This blind spot does not include the allegados, as many people living in free accommodation are called in the poor neighbourhoods in Santiago de Chile. In a country where the right to home ownership is continually upheld, shared lodgings are seen as a social tragedy, resulting from the tough constraints imposed on housing policy by the military dictatorship. This unequivocal interpretation deserves to be re-evaluated: shared lodgings should not be seen merely as a way to fine-tune housing supply and demand in a situation of penury and crisis, without taking into account arbitral arrangements by households, with particular reference to their desire to become property-owners.