Housing policies, construction and real estate in Brazil today

Abstract

The production of cities in Brazil has been changed profoundly in the beginning of XXI century. The formation of a new form of housing production, which articulates State, construction companies and financial capital, requires the understanding about the linkages between real estate, construction, housing policy and financialization.Between 2006 and 2010, major construction companies and developers started producing housing for the low-income strata of the population and promoted an accelerated growth of the housing production. It refers to the affordable housing market, which offers unities with values below $100,000, and that is doubly benefited by getting access to both funding sources traditionally intended for social housing as those intended for housing market, particularly via financial capital.From the moment that a certain company that produces housing becomes at the same time, landowner, developer, builder, bank, seller of shares in financial market and government agent for consumer finance, the structure of the market changes. Consequently, the forms of production of housing and the real estate products also transform.In this sense, this project aims to analyse these new dynamics of the structure of provision and production of housing in contemporary Brazil. Therefore it involves the dimensions related to the elaboration of public policies, which define the financial resources for the low income population, the influence of the financial market, in view of the capital invested in several large construction companies, the structure of provision of housing, focusing on the relationship between its agents and the potential for innovation in this production chain, and the configuration of real estate products that produce cities. There is a lack in the Brazilian debate related to an analysis that articulates companies and institutions who participate of the structure of production and provision of housing. Rare are the approaches that seek to establish the relationships between the agents involved in the activities of design and construction, industrial production activities and services for the management and maintenance of buildings. Also it's very rare the approaches that link these actors to the urban question.In this sense, the scientific challenge of this project concerns to the formulation of a theoretical status about the provision of housing and production in Brazil, which identifies and analyzes its forms of production and circulation - as well as in other Latin American contexts. The technological challenge is related to the analysis about the effective relations between these agents and the dynamics of innovation present in the main activities related to the construction and maintenance of housing projects. Both challenges will be achieved through a qualitative research approach that involves two initiatives. The first is the field research on construction sites of large construction companies, linked to housing programs, with emphasis on aspects related to technological innovation and the management and control of the work at the construction site. The second concerns the qualitative research being developed in these big companies, trying to map the relationships that they establish with other productive and institutional agents and the characteristics of real estate products. (AU)