Pobreza e desigualdade

Slum identification and mapping are fundamental to support public policies. However, slum data is affected by differences in definition, identification, spatial delimitation, sample and data collection periods. This study compares slum maps in Sao Mateus (a peripheral region of Sao Paulo city) from the 2010 demographic census and the Sao Paulo municipal government. The census and the municipal basemaps and orthophotos were overlaid in a Geographic Information System (GIS) to evaluate their similarities and differences, the reasons for inconsistencies between them. Of the 68 districts with subnormal agglomerates (EDSAs; special enumeration districts for slum areas in the Brazilian demographic census), 59% are in the categories ‘high coincidence’ or ‘partial coincidence’ with the perimeters of favelas (the main type of slum in Brazil) delineated by the Sao Paulo municipal government; the names of the residential area (favela/EDSA) are the same in only 51.5% of the subnormal agglomerates, while 26.5% of the EDSAs include residential areas not considered favelas by the municipality. Many Brazilian researchers state that the underestimation of EDSA census data is accentuated by the exclusion of favelas smaller than 51 dwellings from the census. However, at least in Sao Mateus, the exclusion of small favelas (3.6%) was not the only reason for census underestimation of favelas.

This paper is about changes in people's perceptions relating to security of land tenure in Recife, Brazil. This paper investigates why people living in contested settlements invest and consolidate their houses despite the apparent lack of land tenure security. The question is very simple, but the answer is highly complex. Although the topic has been widely researched, there is still insufficient understanding of what security means to individual households, and how security influences the consolidation and improvements of houses. Households invest in all kinds of processes and commodities to improve their plots, and their houses, and inevitably this changes their perceptions of security. Data were mainly gathered from in-depth interviews held with a total of 63 households living in five different informal settlements in Recife. The paper focuses on the informal claims made by households about their perceived rights over their property, since for the great majority of the households living in these settlements, property rights in the form of title deeds are not available. The key aspects highlighted in this papers are that (1) the lack of a better understanding about what tenure really means to low-income households can pose threats to the survival of low-income housing markets, and (2) contrary to orthodox knowledge, the paper contends that perceptions of tenure security increase as a result of housing consolidation.

This paper presents a study on quality of life and sustainability indicators relating to site-planning parameters for low income public housing projects in the region of Campinas, Brazil. The study is based on a post-occupancy-evaluation (POE), conducted in five housing developments. Most of these housing projects are based on a repetitive model and are devoid of urban infrastructure. Users act on their own in providing for some elements considered necessary to create an identity and community spirit. Results show that the population relates quality of life to economic factors and sustainability is associated to reduce utility bills. Houses are preferred to apartments and satisfaction with the present housing conditions is high, despite low feelings of security in the neighbourhood. This work is part of a broader study, which aims to develop design evaluation tools. Most sensitive quality of life and sustainability indicators related to site-planning should permeate these tools and establish design guidelines. The inclusion of a large number of qualitative design issues into the decision-making process and the questioning of existing standardized solutions are seen as essential means to increase local housing quality.

The main purpose of this paper is to ascertain whether the concession of real right to use (CRRU) has been widely applied by Brazilian municipalities, and the extent to which beneficiaries (individuals living in regularised low-income settlements) make effective use of such an instrument to secure tenure status. Another relevant aspect is to review the relationship between securing land tenure and the use of land as collateral for investment. It is hoped that the paper can be used as the basis for a longitudinal study to monitor progress in the provision of secure tenure for the urban poor in Brazil, by investigating the strengths and weakness of CRRU to the formulation and implementation of pro-poor urban land tenure policies. Findings indicate that municipalities have to overcome problems related to the implementation of these programmes, such as; resistance on the part of the judiciary (at the municipal level) to incorporate newly acquired rights; the need to change attitudes towards the legalisation process of occupied land; and the need to change residents’ perceptions of this new instrument. The success of CRRU can depend on the articulation of these issues, as well as more integrated actions among planners, lawyers, city managers, and the residents of these settlements to advance performance.

The presence of precarious housing solutions, such as favelas and irregular settlements, is a basic feature of urban inequalities in Southern cities, and the predominant description of the international literature suggests social and housing homogeneity of these areas. They are known to be strongly affected both by economic conjunctures and by public policies, which changed intensely in Brazilian metropolises since the 1990s, transforming the existing housing precarity. This article discusses recent changes in housing precarity in the city of São Paulo, showing a reduction of its intensity, but the increasing heterogeneity of the situations. We estimate the population in favelas and irregular settlements and the socioeconomic indicators of their inhabitants and households recently, drawing on a study using Census data and Geographic information system techniques. The paper shows that nonetheless there was a significant improvement of life conditions in favelas and irregular settlements, which tend to be quite heterogeneous, there is a maintenance of considerable inequalities between these housing solutions and the entire rest of the city.

Brazil's main housing program, Minha Casa Minha Vida (MCMV), has contracted the construction of over 3 million housing units since 2009, providing access to homeownership for low and middle-income households through a combination of credit, subsidies and guarantees. In this paper, we analyze disaggregated delinquency information at the project level for the section of the program that serves households in the lowest income range (Faixa 1). Our analysis of program performance in six metropolitan regions shows an overall level of delinquency of 28% as of the end of 2015. We identify four hypotheses to explain this elevated level of delinquency: the peripheral location of the units, insufficient income to cover ongoing costs, moral hazard in the management of the program, and organized crime in some projects. Our analysis shows that in 4 of the 6 regions, low-income projects in peripheral locations exhibit substantially higher non-payment levels and that lower income households have higher levels of delinquency. Based on our analysis, we recommend modifications to program design, including the inclusion of location criteria in subsidy scaling. The findings provide evidence of the limits of MCMV Faixa 1's approach to solving Brazilian low-income housing needs and contribute to an emerging body of literature pointing to the importance of location in housing programs.

Slum clearance and resettlement schemes have increasingly become a feature of everyday life in Brazil and the rest of the world. The right to decent housing can involve relocating slum families to places that not only fulfill the precepts of adequate housing but also enhance the self-respect and quality of life of these families. Resettlement can however also heighten their vulnerabilities. This article is the result of a study which sought to evaluate how the resettled residents of a housing complex had adapted to their new surroundings following their involuntary displacement from the slums “favelas” to a development with characteristics different from those commonly found in Brazilian social housing. The research method employed in our study used tools to collect the viewpoints of the different actors in the process, and to assess user satisfaction. The uncertainty measure was used to analyze the quantitative data. The results showed that (i) involuntary removal is not a determining factor in user satisfaction, and (ii) residents' satisfaction levels are more influenced by a number of positive factors, especially the location of the housing development and its associated services, facilities and opportunities that enhance their quality of life, than by any drawbacks arising from their forced removal from the “favelas”. However, issues such as condominium management, buildings maintenance and higher costs may risk undermining the benefits of the project.

Overcrowding in informal housing is a core problem in international development debates, whereby slum upgrading is viewed as a dominant policy to integrate formal and informal areas. Conceptually, challenges to socio-spatial integration are associated with unbalanced development processes of urban de- and re-densification beyond the housing level. However, a lack of empirical understanding of these processes limits the case for redistributive land use policies to complement slum upgrading. To address this gap, our study adopts an exploratory approach, applying GIS-based techniques to population census and open data on land use in São Paulo, Brazil, in order to analyze the distribution of population densities across residential built-up types in informal and informal areas, although there are constrains related to small-scale spatial data sources on urban density. This shows that informal settlements are indeed the densest residential built-up type in the city while revealing the underlying spatial inequality between informal settlements and low-rise, high-standard residential areas. We suggest that more emphasis be placed on the design and implementation of redistributive policies to avoid spatialized forms of inequality associated with uneven urban development. This will ensure the spatial and social integration of urban areas.

The paper presents a historical overview of the relations between housing, housing finance and capital markets in Brazil, while embedding it into an analysis of the recently launched housing program My House My Life (MCMV). Considering the absence of a consolidated market for mortgage finance and a public housing stock, Brazilian financialization doesn't fit standard narratives that have either prioritized US or European experience. Brazilian financialization has been truncated in the sense that it has always depended on the contradictory territorial intervention of a developmental state that has never reached out to lowest income groups.

While MCMV has seen continuities in relation to the housing delivery and finance of the technocratic developmental state in terms of not matching low-income housing targets and priorities of national urban reform, it is argued that contradictions are not inscribed in space. More particularly, where proactive local governments have been able to make use of city statute instruments in order to articulate land delivery, the program has been able to produce affordable and well-located housing units.

Finally, the inherent contradictions of financialization are not likely to lead to subprime crises, contagion and ex-post state rescue operations as occurred in the US and European context. Instead, endogenous state involvement in subsidized housing finance will increasingly face budgetary and monetary restrictions, leading to a relatively soft landing and gradual public withdrawal from low income housing finance. In that sense, MCMV might prove to become another innovation that fails to live up to expectations.

The public policies programs for low-income housing in Brazil started in the 1930s. The most recent well advertised program Minha Casa, Minha Vida (MCMV) by the Federal government has the goals to improve the quality of life of poor people, to reduce the housing deficit, and to foster the economy. The objective in this research is to evaluate socioeconomic impacts of low-income housing on regional economic system, highlighting housing public policies developed by the state and the federal government. Under an emerging low-income housing policy, the state of Sao Paulo created the so-called CDHU. The question raised by this paper is how important was the contribution of these programs to the economic growth in the state of Sao Paulo and in the rest of Brazilian economy in previous years?

Thus, a specific interregional input-output model is estimated for two regions, state of São Paulo and rest of Brazil, with the usage of six different typologies of low income housing ranging from a single families housing to gated community housing. The impacts are measured in terms of GDP, tax collection, production, and employment in the State of Sao Paulo and in the rest of Brazil. The results show that the effect in the economy is different ~ depending on the chosen housing typology investment; in other words, the estimated model provide tools to decide about the best housing type for promoting economic growth. The MCMV program and the CDHU's program affect the state economy system by expanding the demand for inputs for the construction of new buildings (direct effect); by expanding the demand in other sectors due to the feedback effect (indirect effect), and by expanding the income of families - it also increases the demand for goods and services in the economy (induced effect).