Some urban problems irritate Brazilians. High-rise buildings that change the landscape of the neighborhood. Overhead electrical wires and billboards that generate visual pollution. The spread of Oxus and pharmacies. These are publications that go viral and are central topics of urban discussions in newspapers and master plans. However, the anger seems to ignore a more serious problem.
In Brazil, 16 million people, equivalent to the population of the Netherlands, live in slums. This means, as a rule, unstable housing and the absence of land ownership and thus basic infrastructure and public services. About 500,000 of these families cannot even access the water distribution network. Faced with an institutional vacuum, these areas have also become hostage to organized crime. There is a close relationship between (lack of) urbanization and public safety.
These slums are located on the outskirts of Teresina, where hundreds of mud houses (built with primitive wood and clay techniques) appeared not in the last century, but in 2020, during the pandemic. They are also present in Morumbi, in São Paulo, where more than 50,000 people live in Paraísopolis alone. Or in downtown Rio de Janeiro, where the Morro da Providência favela, considered the first of its kind in the country, has been overlooked for at least 130 years. It is clear that poverty does not disrupt the urban landscape, nor does it arouse discontent.
Since the establishment of the National Housing Bank (BNH) in 1964, our housing policy has focused on financing new housing complexes. “Decent housing,” said the sign showing the recently opened Minha Casa, Minha Vida (PMCMV) project on the outskirts of Imperatriz, in the interior of Maranhão. The accompanying picture was of identical, repetitive homes, with limited access to jobs, services or transportation networks.
The “Morar Longe” study, conducted by the Escolhas Institute in partnership with Cepesp/FGV, evaluates the outcome of the PMCMV, showing that the solution encouraged the occupation of areas far from the city center. Thanks to the funding, these residents also remain “trapped” in their addresses for ten years, making it difficult to change jobs that might lead to social mobility. Even with millions of units delivered, between the 2010 and 2022 census, Brazil showed a 43.5% growth in its population living in favelas, highlighting not only the inadequacy of PMCMV but also the need to act in already consolidated areas.
Brazil already knew how to do better. The Favela Bairro programme, in Rio de Janeiro, invested in urban and housing improvements in slums. The success of the program in the early 2000s led Colombian case study technicians and inspired current social urbanism programs in Bogota and Medellin. After 15 years of operation in 16 favelas, the favela bairro was discontinued, eliminating the institutional capacity that the carioca had built to integrate favelas into the “asphalt.” Today, Brazilians go to Colombia to try to relearn what they left behind.
The cost of Favela Bairro was approximately R$20,000 per household in current values. For comparison, the maximum value of a property in Band 1 of the PMCMV is R$294,000. In other words, the cost of just a residential unit is ten times higher, not counting the cost of delivering infrastructure and services to the peripheral areas where the projects are being built.
This difference in magnitude is also evident in the absolute values between the two strategies. The Acceleration and Growth Program (PAC) included programs to urbanize precarious settlements amounting at its peak to R$2 billion annually between 2007 and 2014. Meanwhile, the PMCMV’s budget in 2025 is R$138 billion.
We see housing fires every day in Brazilian cities, and we have tragically learned to ignore them. By deciding to do nothing, we perpetuate inequality and leave the doors open to crime areas. There is an urgent need to think deeply about the target of our urban discontent.
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