Neoliberal reforms, government restructuring, and changes in social housing provision in Ribeirão Preto, Brazil

Across the world traditional forms of urban management are affected by economic restructuring and neoliberalization processes. These processes alter the government role in the provision of social services, give rise to multi-sector partnerships for social service provision by public, private and non-profit actors, and stimulate the creation of alternative approaches to social service provision. In this dissertation I discuss the impact of these changes on social housing provision in Ribeirão Preto, Brazil. I provide a historically-grounded account of political-economic restructuring in Brazil that has emerged through neoliberalization, document how these policy shifts affect social service responsibilities and the fiscal capacities of local and state governments, and show how these transformations increased social housing needs but at the same time decreased overall capacity to deliver housing to the very poor. I also discuss the new proposals that attempt to replace the state's withdrawal from several types of social service provision. Specifically I study partnerships among the public sector, private sector, and civil society, describe the emergence, structure, and functions of these partnerships in Brazil, and implicitly compare how these partnership approaches are used in northern nations such as the United States and United Kingdom. Finally, I look inside social housing organizations to examine alternative housing strategies that have emerged, and highlight the problems with these alternative strategies and suggest reasons for their failings. The arguments of this dissertation are developed from ethnographic research conducted in the Ribeirão Preto region of Brazil.