{"id":25785,"date":"2015-12-10T13:16:03","date_gmt":"2015-12-10T16:16:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=25785"},"modified":"2020-08-07T14:04:17","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T17:04:17","slug":"study-shows-lack-of-knowledge-of-housing-laws-in-ten-brazilian-capitals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=25785","title":{"rendered":"Study Shows Lack of Knowledge of Housing Laws in Ten Brazilian Capitals"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

For the original in Portuguese published on\u00a0EBC\u00a0click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Brazil has strong housing rights legislation. Why, then, is it not applied?<\/h2>\n

Brazil has the necessary\u00a0laws to relieve problems with housing<\/a> and\u00a0land\u00a0regulation<\/a>. However, the government, especially civil servants from the administrative and judicial sectors, as well as the people who need a home, still do not know what tools are available to assist them in accessing this right. The findings come from a study entitled, ‘Didn’t\u00a0Have a Roof, Didn’t\u00a0Have Anything: Why the instruments for land regulation\u00a0(still) have not guaranteed the right to housing in Brazil\u2019 (N\u00e3o Tinha Teto, N\u00e3o Tinha Nada – Porque os instrumentos de regulariza\u00e7\u00e3o fundi\u00e1ria (ainda) n\u00e3o efetivaram o direito \u00e0 moradia no Brasil<\/em>), which was presented September 1, 2015\u00a0to the Ministry of Justice in a\u00a0seminar on\u00a0the right to housing.<\/p>\n

Focused on 10 Brazilian state capitals, the study investigated the effectiveness of instruments for land\u00a0rights in situations involving collective urban adverse possession<\/a> (when a group of people peacefully occupy land and after five years obtain the right to the land<\/a> from the Ministry of Justice, then divide it\u00a0between themselves); the concession of land for special use as housing (when the government\u00a0gives concessions to use the land but\u00a0the government continues to own it); and legitimized possession (when the government delineates an area and provides\u00a0possession rights to the citizen which, after five years, are\u00a0transformed into full\u00a0property rights<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The coordinator of the study, Professor Ar\u00edcia Fernandes of the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), states that the study tries to understand why the tools created to resolve the country’s housing problems have not had the desired effects. According to Ar\u00edcia, the Judiciary has a very conservative outlook on these issues, which in turn makes it very difficult to realize\u00a0the social impact of those instruments. The professor summed up that the public administration does not know how to apply the law, and the beneficiaries\u00a0don\u2019t know how\u00a0to gain access to the tools provided by the law in order to regularize\u00a0their housing situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe legislation constitutes an advancement,\u00a0but its tools are barely used.” Ar\u00edcia explains. \u201cWe concluded that neither the government nor the beneficiaries\u00a0understand the tools available to regulate housing, and that this happens because of a lack of publicity, dissemination of information and debate on the subject, as much within\u00a0the government as for\u00a0the beneficiaries. There is also a lack of training (of the public actors involved in the process), in order to give greater clarity to these policies,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

According to Ar\u00edcia, the Judiciary still employs “an 18th<\/sup> century vision” about issues relating to land and housing. \u201c[The Judiciary] needs to better understand the social function of housing regulations, because it is not about giving houses, but rather\u00a0it is a question of individual and collective rights, in service of the public interest. The Judiciary has great difficulty in judging collective issues. So there is a strong tendency to dismember collective\u00a0actions into separate\u00a0batches and to\u00a0treat them as individual rights claims.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople understand that housing regulation depends on political will, rather than seeing it as public policy. The challenge is to make the government understand that the community is not just a source of votes and government\u00a0decisions are not about providing\u00a0favors. There is a subjective right on this issue, involving\u00a0the right to citizenship. These people have been there for years and they have a right to an address,\u201d Ar\u00edcia affirms. The researcher highlighted the need for the authorities to understand that regulation must go beyond\u00a0focusing merely on possession and must also consider issues with land rights, urban planning, and social and environmental factors. \u201cIt\u2019s about giving a city to the people with the necessary infrastructure and services. In this sense, the Minha Casa, Minha Vida<\/a> program has helped.”<\/p>\n

According to the Secretary for\u00a0Legislative Affairs for the Ministry of Justice, Gabriel Sampaio, by presenting\u00a0diagnoses, the study\u00a0becomes relevant by\u00a0\u201copening a dialogue\u201d with each of the\u00a0three branches of government. \u201c[This] helps develop the existing instruments to guarantee housing for Brazilian citizens and allows the country to advance in the provision of fundamental rights to the city\u00a0and to housing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beginning in March 2014, the study examined land regulation norms\u00a0and the judicial, administrative, and notarial\u00a0barriers to their application in ten state capitals: Bras\u00edlia, Bel\u00e9m, Fortaleza, Recife, Salvador, Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro, S\u00e3o Paulo, Curitiba, and Porto Alegre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas For the original in Portuguese published on\u00a0EBC\u00a0click here. Brazil has strong housing rights legislation. Why, then, is it not applied? Brazil has the necessary\u00a0laws to relieve problems with housing and\u00a0land\u00a0regulation. However, […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":25789,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1854,335,1282,329,1330],"tags":[282,26,25,1902,1033,354,157,740],"writer":[1897],"translator":[1344],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-25785","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-housingwatch","8":"category-policies","9":"category-research-analysis","10":"category-solutions","11":"category-translation","12":"tag-housing","13":"tag-housing-rights","14":"tag-human-rights","15":"tag-human-rights-day","16":"tag-land-rights","17":"tag-law","18":"tag-minha-casa-minha-vida","19":"tag-research-findings","20":"writer-pedro-peduzzi","21":"translator-cara-pears"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25785"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=25785"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=25785"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=25785"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=25785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}