{"id":12707,"date":"2013-12-26T16:45:14","date_gmt":"2013-12-26T19:45:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=12707"},"modified":"2021-10-21T09:39:07","modified_gmt":"2021-10-21T12:39:07","slug":"minha-casa-minha-vida-entidades-federally-funded-housing-solutions-through-self-managed-cooperatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=12707","title":{"rendered":"Minha Casa Minha Vida-Entidades: Federally-Funded Housing Solutions Through Self-Managed Cooperatives"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas\"\"<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Every month, representatives of 116 families meet in a warehouse in central Rio. The families currently live in different parts of the city: in the favelas of Parque da Cidade<\/a> and Provid\u00eancia<\/a>, the urban occupation Quilombo das Guerreiras<\/a>, and other parts of Rio\u2019s downtown and Port Zone<\/a>. Because of their involvement with the social movements\u00a0Central de Movimentos Populares <\/em>(Center for Popular\u00a0Movements<\/a>, or CMP) and Uni\u00e3o Nacional por Moradia Popular<\/em>\u00a0(National Union for Popular Housing, or UMP), and thanks to financing from the federal program Minha Casa Minha Vida-Entidades<\/em>, they will soon all live together in an apartment building on the site of the warehouse and five adjacent lots.<\/p>\n

The project is called Quilombo da Gamboa<\/a>, and it will provide government subsidized affordable housing for families making up to three times the Brazilian minimum wage, or under R$1,600 (US$695) per month. Because it\u2019s in Rio\u2019s central Port Zone, residents will enjoy access to the jobs and other urban resources that brought many of them to their current homes in Rio’s South or Central zones. The design has two interior courtyards to cultivate community life, and one that will have access to the street so that residents are connected with the outside neighborhood. The architecture firm talked through these design decisions with the entire group, just as the group decides together about maintenance of the current lots and music and holiday events they currently organize.<\/p>\n

Josilene Lima, a 38-year-old domestic worker, first attended an organizing meeting for the Quilombo da Gamboa because a friend thought she might find it interesting. Curious about the group\u2019s organizational style, she asked a question about it at the meeting, and was drawn in by the enthusiasm and participatory nature of the group. Lima is now one of Gamboa\u2019s coordinators and a regional representative of the UMP,\u00a0and she speaks gratefully of the hope and friendships she\u2019s found in the process, even through struggle: \u201cNo one is born knowing things. I\u2019m here where I never thought I would be because I\u2019ve gotten attached to a group of people who work for something better.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Across the city in the West Zone neighborhood of Col\u00f4nia Juliano Moreira<\/a>, another housing cooperative called Grupo Esperan\u00e7a<\/a> is in progress with a slightly different setup: with an architect\u2019s support, the families themselves are building seventy single-family brick homes. Under a fluttering yellow UMP flag, they meet every Sunday for a group workday, traveling from areas such Campo Grande, two hours farther west, and Vig\u00e1rio Geral, two hours to the north.<\/p>\n

Grupo Esperan\u00e7a too is designed with participatory management at every step. Over a lunch cooked and served by two co-op members, the group votes on their budget for the coming weeks and any necessary decisions about hiring and booking for construction shifts.<\/p>\n

In both Quilombo da Gamboa and Grupo Esperan\u00e7a, residents will become owners of their homes under a collective contract. The co-ops are subsidized by a federal program called Minha Casa Minha Vida-Entidades, which supports self-organized affordable housing intiatives that are affiliated with non-governmental organizations. These and other Rio co-ops are possible due to a great deal of technical, legal, and organizational support from the Bento Rubi\u00e3o Human Rights Foundation<\/a> and from\u00a0social movements for the right to housing.<\/p>\n

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The co-ops are in demand. Jurema Const\u00e2ncio is helping coordinate Grupo Esperan\u00e7a after a successful ten years of living in the co-op of Shangri-La in nearby Taquara. Esperan\u00e7a architect Alexandre Correira stops in to visit families in the Herbert de Souza co-op, which he also designed, on the way to visit his current site. And Joseline Lima has enough people on the Quilombo da Gamboa waiting list to fill several future collectives.<\/p>\n

The Face of Affordable Housing in Rio<\/strong><\/p>\n

The housing deficit in the city of Rio was calculated by the Pereira Passos Institute in 2011 as 148,000 units. This includes homes that are needed for people in precarious housing, those who live multiple families to a home, families that earn up to three times the minimum wage and spend more than 30% of their income on rent, and homes with more than three people per bedroom. Under federal law, people who make up to ten times the minimum wage and are not homeowners qualify for subsidized \u201csocial interest\u201d housing; those in the greatest need make up to three times the minimum wage and are classified as \u201cstrip one\u201d income earners.<\/p>\n

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The people that public housing is designed to serve are found across the city, and many who fall into this category live in Rio\u2019s favelas, which house a range of lower income-earners and various levels of quality of housing, from precarious to consolidated. When told they must move to public housing units, however, thousands of families from more precarious favela housing every year choose not to go\u2014and many campaign vigorously<\/a> to stay where they are. That\u2019s because of the quality<\/a> and inaccessible location<\/a> of the standard public housing units, financed through the primary arm of the Minha Casa Minha Vida<\/a> program. The majority of these units are built in the city\u2019s distant peripheries, where one housing department official warned<\/a> against creating \u201cghettos of poverty,\u201d and where paramilitary militia<\/a> groups frequently extort money and prohibit political behavior from residents.<\/p>\n

Bento Rubi\u00e3o Foundation director Ricardo de Gouv\u00eaa Corr\u00eaa explains that quality issues in the conventional Mina Casa Minha Vida units come from the fact that the developers for the units are contracted by the government, siphon funds by utilizing the poorest quality materials available, take no input from future residents, and that their incentive is to build where land is the cheapest. \u201cMinha Casa Minha Vida was promoted as something that would boost Brazil\u2019s economy through the civil construction sector,\u201d adds Gouv\u00eaa. \u201cBut what it destroyed was high-quality housing.\u201d<\/p>\n

United Nations Rapporteur for the right to Adequate Housing Raquel Rolnik reported<\/a> to the UN General Assembly in 2012 that the global trend of privatizing government-subsidized housing into the hands of developers motivated by market incentives before the social aspects of housing \u201chas contributed to a widespread bubble in real estate prices and a decrease in affordability and has done little to promote access to affordable adequate housing for the poorest.\u201d<\/p>\n

The vast majority of favela residents would rather see<\/a> on-site infrastructure upgrades to their neighborhoods than move to Minha Casa Minha Vida housing projects. International urbanists<\/a> and local officials<\/a> agree\u2014and it has been legislated as such<\/a>\u2014that on-site upgrades, rather than resettlement, are the best approach to addressing the infrastructure needs of the favelas. But upgrades inch along<\/a>, and special legal guidelines designed to help ease the transition into formality for favela residents, called Zones of Special Social Interest, are only partially carried out in Rio such that residents see home and utility prices rise dramatically before they benefit from the improvement in services.<\/p>\n

The affordable housing option the government continues to bankroll are the Minha Casa Minha Vida apartments. Of the Minha Casa Minha Vida budget, at most 5-10% each year is invested in Entidades co-operatives.<\/p>\n

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The Brazilian government\u2019s commitment to affordable housing is due in large part to the work of the National Forum for Urban Reform<\/a>, a coalition of social movements, urbanists, researchers, and human rights advocates that came together during the drafting of Brazil\u2019s post-dictatorship constitution of 1988. They successfully advocated for an article about the social function of property that was followed by specific provisions for housing in cities. The Forum argued that existing urban informality developed from a need for land reform that dates back<\/a> to the abolition of slavery, when black Brazilians were forbidden from owning property. The rural counterpart working for land reform in Brazil, the Landless Worker’s Movement (MST)<\/a>, is one of the largest social movements in Latin America.<\/p>\n

Based on the principle of the social use of property, the Forum and its allies proposed a public fund for low-income Brazilians to purchase and reform homes, buy construction materials, urbanize informal settlements, buy group equipment, and conduct landholding regularization. They drafted the first constitutional bill of popular origin, and after thirteen years of advocating, the National Fund for Social Interest Housing (FNHIS)<\/a> was created in 2005.<\/p>\n

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Near R$1 billion per year was set aside for FNHIS, and through programs called “Solidarity Credit” and “Support for the Social Production of Housing,”\u00a0<\/em>it began to fund self-managed affordable housing projects in vacant federal and city properties, such as the Rio co-ops Shangri-La, Mariana Criolo, and the early stages of Gamboa and Esperan\u00e7a. But the money and approval for these projects lagged and then decreased dramatically after President Lula announced the Minha Casa Minha Vida program, together with its Entidades offshoot, in 2009. \u201cToday the Fund,\u201d says Ricard Correia, \u201cdoes not have funds.\u201d Between 2008 and 2011, federal funding contracted<\/a> 30,000 units of co-op housing and 449,000 units of privately contracted Minha Casa Minha Vida apartments.<\/p>\n

Now, around R$1 billion annually is set to go toward the Entidades projects. Marcelo Edmundo of CMP, <\/em>one of the coordinators of the Quilombo da Gamboa, worries that co-op funding that comes from a presidential program is less stable than a permanent fund that is codified into law. Ricardo Gouv\u00eaa says the source of the funding is less worrisome than whether it will actually be released. Although the FHNIS money, for example, was projected at R$4 billion between 2008 and 2011, only 7%<\/a>\u00a0of that money was actually used to build projects.<\/p>\n

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Gouv\u00eaa says the bureaucratic barriers to getting funding released for co-op housing projects are still maddening. This year members of the housing social movements were driven to protest in front of the federal bank Caixa Econ\u00f4mica Federal, which is responsible for financing Minha Casa Minha Vida, after it had stalled for years in processing completed paperwork for an Entidades building reform downtown. In 2011 Gouv\u00eaa was part of a group that traveled to Bras\u00edlia and physically blocked Lula\u2019s car to demand bottlenecked funding for another\u00a0Entidades project. He recently saw eight months of delays simply trying to procure the correct documents for an Entidades\u00a0environmental license, eventually traveling to the national capital. \u201cThe proportion of funding that is released for these projects is just not adequate,\u201d Gouv\u00eaa says.<\/p>\n

Preserving Affordability<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rio\u2019s favelas, even those receiving upgrades–as well as the city’s public housing–have yet to see committed, legally clear, holistic measures to preserve affordability. In a standard Minha Casa Minha Vida apartment, residents can sell after five to ten years (although scandals of early sales abound across the country). In Quilombo da Gamboa and Grupo Esperan\u00e7a, residents can sell after ten years, although they are encouraged only to do so to others in need of subsidized housing.<\/p>\n

When Columbia School of Architecture Dean Mark Wigley called affordable housing \u201cthe issue of our time\u201d in a debate<\/a> with Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes last month, he was referring not only to facilitating affordability but also to sustaining it.<\/p>\n

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Perhaps the best answer to whether conventional public housing in Rio is successfully addressing the city\u2019s needs is the fact that despite its construction between 2000 and 2010, the city\u2019s favela population grew<\/a> over 27%, while the population of the rest of the city grew 7.4%.\u00a0Furthermore, in many public housing units such as\u00a0City of God<\/a>, residents who had difficulty accessing urban resources such as jobs built additional brick units for workspace in the streets and adjacent areas to the extent that the community–originally public housing–became considered a \u201cfavela.\u201d Residents frequently address the limitations of public housing design in Rio, adapting the built environment to their needs in “favela-style<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

To sustain the affordability of public housing, Marcelo Edmundo would prefer if collective property ownership were legal in Brazil. This is the case in Uruguay, where over 20,000 families are living in homes and apartments built through mutual aid: individual units can only be inherited or sold back to the group. The Uruguaian co-ops were studied, and their designers involved in a policy exchange with Rio architects, social movements, and public officials, during the creation of the Bento Rubi\u00e3o Foundation\u2019s housing assistance program.<\/p>\n

Many point out that Brazil\u2019s strong tradition of individual property rights makes collective property ownership difficult to imagine politically. But it is not the only method of preserving housing affordability; Raquel Rolnik included several in her 2013 recommendations to the UN General Assembly<\/a>. Another is responsible government care of informal rental housing (found in Rio\u2019s favelas). Yet another is rent legislation and rent control. In addition, Rolnik describes in detail various types of housing cooperative systems that include group decision-making but vary in whether units are for rental or ownership, and whether finance support includes loans on materials, loans for individual family needs, and group savings.<\/p>\n

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Organizing\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Whether collective management of public housing projects, as currently exists in Gamboa and Esperan\u00e7a, should be fortified by the passing of collective land ownership in Brazil is an ongoing discussion among right to housing social movements and those who work in urban policy.<\/p>\n

On November 21 through 23rd<\/sup>, Bras\u00edlia hosted the National Conference of Cities, a triennial forum for citizens to debate and propose urban legislation. Committees in cities around the country that have been meeting for months came up with an agenda<\/a> that recommended the consideration of a constitutional amendment that would allow collective property use, a permanent and robust National Fund for Urban Development that would add to existing FHNIS funds for housing and other social needs, and a national plan for regularizing land ownership that guarantees permanence to families and avoids expulsion by the real estate market.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m almost certain that very little of the proposals will pass,\u201d said Rio de Janeiro Federal University planning professor Orlando Santos Junior, a delegate from Rio, before the conference. The National Fund for Urban Development, for example, was proposed two conferences ago. At this conference, the base text for its foundation was voted in by the group.<\/p>\n

Another recommendation Raquel Rolnik made to the United Nations this year was for the removal of bureaucracy in access to affordable housing methods. For example, in the regularization of informal rental markets, \u201cstates should\u2026include in their housing programs incentives and subsidies to assist small-scale landlords to expand and improve habitability in rental accommodation,\u201d and \u201cencourage and support the use of standardized rental contracts, in order to reduce the number and severity of disputes between landlords and tenants. To that end, standard forms of contracts should be freely available and widely distributed and should not require notary approval.\u201d This level of ease and clarity is the opposite, in fact, of the current difficulties in regularizing tenure in favelas as well as accessing funding for cooperative housing.<\/p>\n

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At a recent Quilombo da Gamboa meeting, future resident Aldair Alves gave a rousing speech to inspire his peers to accompany him to a government office downtown to check on the status of funding for construction: \u201cThe government is not just going to put things in your lap!\u201d People applauded. \u201cYou have to go bang on their door and say, \u2018I have a right to this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Across the country, Entidades projects continue to move forward, according to an Observat\u00f3rio das Metropolis study<\/a> done in S\u00e3o Paulo and Porto Alegre, creating \u201chigh-quality housing, self-esteem, social mobilization, and the vision of constructing a new city.\u201d They are a testament to the power of committed neighbors and future neighbors that self-organize to address their needs, a power that, with clear and responsive government treatment, could be multiplied.<\/p>\n

See full slideshow from Grupo Esperan\u00e7a:
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