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What happens at the interface of states and urban poor populations that live in informal settlements? How are academic disciplines, such as law, architecture or economics, and technical instruments, such as computer software, summoned to the interactions between experts from state or city governments and the laypeople whose housing and lives the former’s work is meant to improve? This paper reflects on these questions as it examines two different experiments, one historical and another from the recent past, in housing provision or amelioration for the residents of informal settlements. In post-revolutionary Portugal, the SAAL (Serviço de Apoio Ambulatório Local) housing program (1974–76) included ‘technical’ brigades of legal, architectural and economic experts tasked to help shanty town dwellers improve their housing conditions, either by assisted self-building or classic new-build. It was a clear example of …