In Chile, several industrial initiatives developed a systematic and intense policy towards worker housing in the 1930s. The Manufacturera de Papeles in Puente Alto and the cement company "La Calera" built modern micro-urbanised neiehbourhoods where workers lived in hygienic houses. As a result, workers were caught in an extensive network of social control in which families were subject to employer surveillance. This article analyses the different debates about working class housing and the desire for reform within the field of social hygienism. By so doing, we examine the necessary intellectual matrix addressing the availability, orientation and the landscape of some of the working-class neighbourhoods that came into existence between 1930 and 1940.