This thesis analyzes the relation between housing and household in informal urban contexts, understanding that in the residential phenomenon, a self-construction house is a process on time, where the household must take different residential strategies in order to meet its habitational needs and expectations. This work uses a biographic methodological approach for the data recollection in Pardo Rubio and Paraiso neighborhoods in Bogota, whose oldness allows us to observe a significant residential development and a social and cultural reproduction of the logics that characterize these contexts. The results are presented according to five core problems: property as assured tenancy, spatial uses, cohabiting, support networks, and plans for the future of the interviewees. Findings show that informal housing is a relational space, and the residential strategies are life strategies each household uses when searching for a better quality of life. The results lead to examine the categories that are being used for housing and habitational policy-formulation since they are not adequate for the population that has been inhabiting in informal urban areas and has begun a transition to formality.