Housing policies, squatting process and social inequalities in the Brazilian cities: transformations and tendencies

Abstract

In Brazil, changes are verified in the directions of the social housing policies, especially associated to the squatting process, being disseminated in a residual and accelerated way, involving social housing settlements, suppressing free spaces, committing fragile atmospheres, and homogenizing the peripheral landscape. Such politics contributed to the exacerbation of the conditions of socio-spatial inequalities in the intra-urban space of metropolises, medium and small cities. Starting from the decade of 1990, the municipalization of the housing policies is motivated, however, due to inherent diversity to the squatter areas, as well as their fragmentation in the intra-urban, lead these politics to adopt actions multi – oriented in relation to the location, to the socio-environmental vulnerability, among others. Inside of a little promising scenario, some tendencies are pointed up, such as: the communities' of risk areas prevalence as larger objective of the actions; the use of urban tools for massive land legalisation; the expansion of the self-help spontaneous city; the enlargement of the formal real estate market in the housing production.