#9 “Minha Casa, Minha Vida”: Brazil’s Social Housing - by Blenda Araujo

Since 2009, the Brazilian government has worked with the social housing program called “Minha Casa, Minha Vida” (“My House, My Life”) which will achieve by the end of this year a number of 3.4 million housing units. The program seems a great initiative if we look how bad the low-income housing in Brazil is. But, it has some failures such as location, comfort and infrastructure.

Location + Infrastructure:
 The settlements are established where land is cheap, which means far…far…far away from downtown, people’s jobs, schools and health care. But, if you going to build a complex full of houses like this seems pretty obvious that you need basic infrastructure, right?! Well, the government don't care, they don't even try. The project is all about houses (and bad houses), there is no integration with existing urban settings. In some places even the public transportation doesn't work. All those issues sometimes makes them prone to becoming ghettos.

"Cidade de Deus" (City of God) is an example of social housing that became into a ghetto because lack of infrastructure. This is not a "Minha Casa, Minha Vida" project but is very similar.

"Cidade de Deus" (City of God) in 1960.

"Cidade de Deus" (City of God) nowadays.

Comfort:
The typology of the houses are the same wherever you go in Brazil. Tiny little houses with no basic insolation studies and all look the same. The repetitive pattern just follow the rules of the current building economy, I presume. 

"Minha Casa, Minha Vida", north of Brazil.

"Minha Casa, Minha Vida", southeast of Brazil.

However, besides all those failures that I mentioned, for me the biggest mistake is how people end up on those places. They are allocated based on sweepstakes, for example, if you are a resident of any risk area and the government decides that you have move to a new community, you probably will not know about any of your neighbors, might be away from your relatives and you will probably move to a house unfinished (floors missing or roof unfinished, no electricity, etc). Which is one of the factors that people don't stay at the new places and eventually go back to the old houses.Thus, it is clear that the brazilian government should consider not only its own interests but also the interests of the population as only then the investment in housing will be successful.