Self-Management Law, Now! Fostering Community-Owned, Permanently Affordable and Sustainable Housing in Brazil

Abstract

Brazil, like many countries around the world, is experiencing a severe and growing housing deficit as a result of a dramatic mismatch between production and need. The provision of services and urban infrastructure often benefit the wealthy while underserving low-income populations, reinforcing and exacerbating inequality. Housing available for low-income populations is frequently inadequate, unaffordable, and unstable. In response, members of social movements demand more: their solution is autogestão (self-managed) housing, democratically produced and governed through practices of mutirão (mutual aid), collective property, and joint effort.

The 2020 Integrative Fieldwork Experience Capstone Team from the University of Michigan compiled this report as a means of summarizing our analysis of the housing issues facing Brazilians, the solutions proposed by the dedicated social movements that represent them, and our work in supporting these movements to advance housing as a fundamental right. The capstone team partnered with the National Union for Popular Housing (UNMP), the Union of Housing Movements (UMM-SP), and the Landless Workers of the East District 1 (MST-Leste 1). The team produced two main deliverables. The first is an interactive website that publicizes and promotes autogestão housing, highlights successful housing projects through an interactive map, and, most importantly, disseminates UNMP’s draft bill that creates a stable legal framework for the continued production of housing under this model. The website acts as a toolkit for a wide array of promotional and educational materials — described in detail below — intended for a wide audience ranging from laypersons to organizers to academics to politicians. In response to the drafted bill, the team also developed a memorandum on suggestions for further development of the bill, specifically to advance the legitimization of collective property as an option for self-managed housing and to address potential barriers to land acquisition. The second main deliverable is the Environmental Engagement Suite, which includes a set of flexible resources to help self-managed housing projects meet environmental protection requirements, address serious environmental vulnerabilities on their land, and overcome major financial and logistical barriers associated with those tasks.