Evidences of imprecision in Brazilian housing policies: the case of São Paulo

Abstract New instruments and goals have been recently, and especially after 2002, added to the national housing policy. They have focused on social inclusion and equality by proposing the guarantee of access to housing for the economically less favored classes of the population. In this sense, the present study aimed to investigate the accuracy of the “My House, My Life” Program (MHMLP), in order to elucidate whether the subsidies have in fact benefited the population that is most deprived of physical and financial means to obtain housing. Recent bibliography indicates the contrary. It is assumed, therefore, that the relation between the target public and benefited public diverges from the expected. To this end, data from the National Housing Secretariat (NHS) and the Federal Savings Bank (FSB) were used to provide a detailed explanation of the municipal housing deficit and the projects aimed at solving it according to income and location. In turn, the data include projects that were approved – but not necessarily executed –until 2013 in the state of São Paulo. These are used as territorial cutting because they present the most significant absolute values of the Union´s housing deficit. It is, therefore, evident that the Brazilian housing policy is territorially extensive and correlated with the existence of deficit. The reproduction of inequalities in the access to housing by means of income criteria persists.