Rental as a modality of housing for low-income families: public housings, the housing choice voucher program and rent-controlled housing in New York

Abstract

The Research Internship Abroad will be held at the Urban Democracy Lab of New York University, under the tutelage of Professor Gianpaolo Baiocchi between July and September of 2018 (three months), as a complement to the postdoctoral research in development, funded by Fapesp. During the internship, it is proposed to research the rental policies included in the American housing policy, specifically in New York City: Public Housings, or so-called 'projects', which are public real estate for social leasing; the Housing Choice Voucher Program, which is a benefit offered by the federal government for the population to rent real estate in the private market; and Rent-Controlled Housing, which is the control of rents in certain regions of the city that guarantees affordable prices in well-located areas.Studying the American example can help us understand the possibilities and limitations to be faced in the replicability of these policies in Brazil, since the housing offerings here are still almost exclusively focused on the offer of private property, and the most vulnerable families can not access to financing or, when they can, are exposed to market dynamics and real estate valuation and are unable to afford the new housing or co-opted to sell the units to families with greater ability to pay. The research with the civil investigations filed at the Public Prosecutor's Office has clearly shown this scenario, where a highly marginalized population is being conducted to occupy properties financed in areas of high valorization value and produced via public-private partnerships, which restrict access to the poorest.Alternative forms to the production of private property such as housing assistance are necessary to complement the policies of own-house, regulate the housing market and reach, above all, families without financial conditions for the acquisition or maintenance of financing systems. The experience of social leasing in São Paulo, along the lines of the American public housing, presents great potential in offering housing in accordance with the ability of families to pay and not leaving the property vulnerable to market laws. It allows a permanent and continuous public service to deal with the poor housing situation of poor families, since the property, because it is public and non-transferable, will not suffer from real estate market pressures with the valuation of the central areas and the resale of the units for families with greater purchasing power and will allow greater control of the subsidies granted, allowing their recovery. Rent control, in New York City, is a non-existent practice in Brazil, due to the disastrous experience of the freezing of rents in the 1940s as well as the strong influence that the real estate market has on the development of urban policy Brazilian. The private housing market faces a continuous process of real estate valuation that has jeopardized the security of tenants' tenure, especially in the cases of urban rehabilitation projects or the implementation of transport infrastructure, which are strengthened by the political conjuncture and economical. Real estate valuation in Brazil was 121% in the five years following the post-American real estate crisis of 2008, when Brazil entered a period of economic prosperity. Between 2008 and 2011, the annual appreciation was over 20%, according to a global survey conducted in 54 countries by the Bank for International Settlements.In order to seek the possibility of an expansion and qualification of the Brazilian housing policy, which is based solely on home ownership, it aims to understand the scope and limitation of the US rental policy and the applicability possibilities of the model, taking into account account the differences in the structure of the political system and the socio-economic divergences of both countries.