Written evidence submitted by the Brazilian
Embassy in London
SUMMARY
This document makes a brief presentation of
the key programmes that Brazil pursues to combat urban poverty,
specifically in the area of housing. There has been a large scale
shift in the urban populations over the past century, currently
80% of the Brazilian population lives in urban areas. Brazilian
research institutes (IBGE, CEM, CEBRAP-SP) have carried out research
to quantify the number of citizens living in precarious settlements
in order to provide subsidies for national strategic planning
and policy. The Ministry for Cities, created in 2003, has been
instrumental in implementing national policy working in tandem
with the Accelerated Growth Programme (PAC) and other relevant
bodies. There are two types of programmes to tackle these huge
challenges:
(i) Living Conditions Improvement Programmes,
Agrarian Regularization and Urbanistic Development for Precarious
Settlements which includes the following initiatives: Programme
of Social Housing Subsidies; Residential Rental Programme; Associate
and Individual Letter of Credit Programme and Social Housing Programme.
Section 4 offers an outline of each of these programmes,
the level of investment and data on population that has benefitted
from these initiatives so far.
(ii) Programmes Aimed at Preventing Precarious
Settlements, which includes the following initiatives: Programme
of Urbanization; Property Ownership Regularization and Integration
of Precarious Settlements; Deed Grant Programme and Pro-Housing
Programme. Section 5 offers an outline of each of these programmes,
the level of investment and data on population that has benefitted
from these initiatives so far.
1. GENERAL BACKGROUND
Between 2000 and 2005, the housing deficit
in Brazil, which used to represent 16.1% of the total housing
stock decreased to 14.9%. The urban housing deficit is prevalent
mainly amongst families that have a monthly income of up to three
minimum salaries;[1]
in 2005, 90.3% of those families accounted for the urban housing
deficit. According to the Institute of Applied Economic Research—("IPEA"),
there was an improvement in the ratio of urban dwellings with
adequate living conditions from 49.4% in 1992 to 61.5% in
2005, increasing occupation by 12 percentage points over
the period.
2. ESTIMATES
OF THE
PROPORTION OF
THE POPULATION
LIVING IN
PRECARIOUS SETTLEMENTS
In order to calculate the number of dwellers
in existing precarious settlements in Brazil, the estimate refers
to the population that lives in areas that the Brazilian Institute
of Geography and Statistics ("IBGE") classifies as a
special sector of subnormal urban clusters. However, the concept
of subnormal clusters, albeit widely applied in practice, broadly
underestimates the dimension of the urban informality, making
the planning of governmental initiatives in precarious settlements
more challenging. In order to overcome such constraints, the National
Housing Secretariat (SNH—Secretaria Nacional de Habitação)
in partnership with the Centre for Metropolitan Studies—"CEM"
of the Brazilian Centre for Analysis and Planning—CEBRAP
(Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento) of São
Paulo carried out a study on the census enumeration areas that
presented profiles of socio-economic, demographic and housing
features similar to those of the census enumeration areas classified
by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics ("IBGE")
as subnormal clusters in the 2000 Census. The calculations
were carried out for a total of 555 selected municipalities.
According to the data ensuing from the study, a total of 12.4 million
inhabitants and 3.2 millions of dwellings in precarious settlements
were identified in the municipalities that were researched.
3. THE ROLE
OF THE
MINISTRY FOR
CITIES[2]
AND PAC[3]
Once the Ministry for Cities was created in
2003, the federal investments in housing leaped from the level
of R$5.2 billion (£1.4 billion) in 2002 to
R$15.2 billion (£4.1 billion) in 2007. It is worth
highlighting the fact that the Accelerated Growth Programme—"PAC"
for short, included the urbanization of shanty towns as a priority
initiative for the growth of Brazil, investing approximately R$
106 billion (£28.6 billion) in the housing sector.
4. CURRENT PROGRAMMESThe
Federal Government has been tackling the challenges by developing
strategic housing programmes within the framework of the Living
Conditions Improvement Programmes, Agrarian Regularization and
Urbanistic Development for Precarious Settlements. A brief outline
of its programmes follows.
4.1 Programme of Social Housing Subsidies—(Programa
do Subsídio à Habitação de Interesse
Social—PSH)
This Programme complements the financial capacity
of individuals with a monthly family income of up to three minimum
salaries comprising finance operations or housing instalments,
the difference between the capacity of the individual to pay and
the necessary amount to purchase a property or (self) build a
house.
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| 2003-06: | 175 thousand families benefitted from the programme.
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| 2006: | investments of R$444 million (£120 million) benefitting 44 thousand families.
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4.2 Residential Rental Programme (Programa de Arrendamento
Residencial—PAR)
This is an initiative of purchasing new build housing projects
or refurbished housing, the units of which are aimed at providing
families that have an income of up to R$1,800.00 (£486.50)
as form of rental that also allows the tenants to purchase the
property. From 2003 to 2006, 895 acquisitions of projects
were made, which provided 150,903 housing units, of which
approximately 100,000 have been let.
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| 2006: | investments of R$1.27 billion (£343 million) benefitting 40,250 families.
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4.3 Associate and Individual Letter of Credit Programme
(Programa Carta de Cr
dito Associativo e Individual)
This programme uses the resources of the Employee's Dismissal
Fund (Fundo de Garantia do Tempo de Serviço) to finance
the purchase of housing units or urban lots of land as well to
fund construction of housing units, completion of building work,
extensions, refurbishment and improvement of housing units and
purchase of building materials. This programme offers discounts
to low income families by paying for the costs of the credit operation
and part of the sale value or the cost of building the dwelling.
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| 2003-06: | 1.1 million families benefitted from this programme
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| 2006: | investments of R$5.47 billion (£1.47 billion) benefitting 360 thousand families.
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4.4 Social Housing Programme (Programa de Habitação
de Interesse Social)
Social Housing aims at providing access to adequate housing
to segments of the population that have a monthly family income
of up to three minimum salaries both in urban and rural locations.
It has been structured in a manner that facilitates access to
decent, regular housing with all public services for the low income
population.
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| 2003-06: | over 46 thousand families obtained funds to build or buy housing units.
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| 2006: | investments of R$108 million (£29.2 million) benefitting 6.4 thousand families.
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5. PROGRAMMES AIMED
AT PREVENTING
PRECARIOUS SETTLEMENTS
5.1 Programme of Urbanization, Property Ownership Regularization
and Integration of Precarious Settlements (Programa Urbanização,
Regularização Fundiária e Integração
de Assentamentos Precários)
This Programme aims at improving housing conditions in precarious
settlements and reducing risks by urbanizing them, regularizing
the property ownership and integrating these settlements into
the urban fabric of the town or city. Its initiatives include
total urbanization of the precarious settlements combining a broad
spectrum of urban and social actions aimed at transforming the
areas in order to achieve decent living conditions.
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| 2003-06: | over 100 thousand families obtained funding to improve their houses.
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Urbanization of precarious settlements were awarded projected
investments from the Federal Government with the launch of the
operation of the National Social Housing Fund "FNHIS"
(Fundo Nacional de Habitação de Interesse Social)
and the inclusion of the urbanization initiative in the Accelerated
Growth Programme—PAC.
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| 2006: | the National Social Housing Fund—"FNHIS" R$1billion (£270 million) contracts.
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5.2 Deed Grant Programme (Programa Papel Passado).
The objective of this programme is to support the states,
municipalities and the Federal District, public defender offices
and non-profit civil society bodies involved in the implementation
of the programmes of property ownership regularization for the
low income population that dwells in irregular precarious settlements
located in publicly or privately owned areas. The set of initiatives
and partnerships of this Programme enable the start of the property
ownership regularization in 26 states and 300 municipalities;
it is estimated that 1.3 million families living in 2,231 informal
settlements will benefit from this initiative. In 2006, about
470 thousand families started the process of regularizing
the ownership of the properties and 87 thousand deeds were
granted out of which 22 thousand have been officially recorded
in notary offices.
5.3 Pro-Housing Programme (Pró-Moradia)
"Pró-Moradia"uses funds of Employee's Dismissal
Fund (Fundo de Garantia do Tempo de Serviço), of the states,
municipalities, Federal District or their direct or indirect administrative
bodies, aiming at offering access to adequate housing to the population,
whose main monthly family income is up to R$1,050.00 (£284.00).
The Pro-Housing Programme is subdivided into three modules:
— Urbanization and Regularization of the Settlements
— Housing Estate Building
— Institutional Development.
As from 2007, one billion Reais (£270 million)
is allocated for this programme on a yearly basis until 2010.
1
The current minimum salary in Brazil is R$ 465.00 (£125.00)
monthly. Back
2
The strategic creation of the Ministry for the Cities on 1st January
2003 aimed at combating social inequality and transforming
the cities into more humanized spaces by providing better access
to housing, basic sanitation, essential services and transportation.
This became a priority as there has a great change in population
distribution over the last century in Brazil. 10% of the Brazilian
population used to live in cities about a hundred years ago, currently
about 80% of the population lives in cities. Ministry website
(in Portuguese): http://www.cidades.gov.br/ Back
3
PAC-Programa de Aceleração de Crescimento -Acceleration
Growth Programme, a federal government initiative, launched in
January 2007, which comprises a four-year set of economic policies
aimed at accelerating the economic growth of Brazil. R$ 503 billion
(£136 billion) are to be invested until 2010. It contains
five blacks of action: (i) main: social infrastructure (housing
and water and sewarage, mass transportation (road, railway, ports,
airports, waterways, etc); (ii) measures to stimulate credit and
finance; (iii) improvements in environmental regulation; (iv)
tax burden removal and (v) long term fiscal measures.
PAC website (in Portuguese): http://www.brasil.gov.br/pac/ Back
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