Tag Brazil

Anthony Ling, an excellent Brazilian blogger who also happens to be an avowed market urbanism, gives us an interesting look at the politics and economics of low-income housing in Brazil: In Brazil there is a vast regulation defining what are the minimum requirements to have a building approved by local authorities. The most common example is probably the Building Codes set by each city, but specific details imposed by planning, environmental and building departments of each city are added to the equation. The recently created Performance Standard also follows this same path, being enforced nationally. The explanation given to establish this regulation is the legal guarantee that every citizen will have a minimum quality of living. However, those who study public policy understand that the passing of a law does not miraculously create high standard buildings accessible to all and, like many other laws, produces effects opposite to those desired. The lower standard building prohibition does just that: tough regulation prevents entrepreneurs from building accessible housing for the poor. This results in government spreading the idea that entrepreneurs think only about attending the high class, and transforms itself as the hero that will build millions of popular houses, as [Brazilian Pres. Dilma Rousseff] did with the Minha Casa, Minha Vida [My House, My Life] program. I think this has a very close parallel in modern American cities with inclusionary zoning and affordable housing mandates. In Brazil, the government creates a housing shortage by having unrealistical building safety standards (which ironically, as Anthony explains, encourage slums that are completely unregulated) and then swoops in and acts plays the savior with its own housing projects. In America, the government creates the shortage through sprawl-forcing zoning codes. But unlike Brazil’s public housing, our politicians instead use rent control (rebranded as “inclusionary zoning” or […]