This paper presents the main findings of research whose objective was to explore the experience of some residents within the Chilean housing policy context. Based on previous studies, this research analyzes the processes of subjectivisation experienced by a group of residents who, despite being provided with social housing from 1980 to 2000, decided to return to their former settlements. Qualitative social research and ethnographic methods were used to compile data for two settlements located in the municipalities of Lampa and San Bernardo, Santiago, for the period 2014 to 2015. This data was analyzed from a perspective of discourse analysis. It is suggested that the repopulation of settlements is a counter-movement to subjectivation processes generated by the provision of social housing, the result being the disruption of the housing process, the idealization of the past and the yearning for different recognition and inhabiting experiences. This paper analyzes the concept of return in the two senses of resistance and failure determined by the search for an impossible place that reflects the different wishes, frustrations and conflicts common to the experience of inhabiting the borders of the formal city.