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The Challenge of Attaining Satisfactory Urban Life in Social Housing Programs

Manfred Fehr*, Karine Beatriz Pinheiro Fernandes

Institute of Geography, Federal University at Uberlândia, 38400 902 Uberlândia MG Brazil

Abstract: Governmental housing programs for low-income populations propose to give them access to urban life. In principle, the process terminates with the delivery of the house, but there is a knowledge gap with respect to eventual mishaps that appear after delivery and that would reflect deficiencies in the programs. This research pretends to fill the knowledge gap by way of a case study. The method consists of interviewing 25 residents who recently moved into their houses in a social housing project of 500 units in central Brazil. The result reveals the nature of the mishaps relative to quality of construction and quality of urbanization. It illustrates the distance between receiving a house and reaching satisfactory urban living. The main problems refer to civil security, architectural layout of the sector and quality of construction. In conclusion, the study reaches its objective by filling the knowledge gap and thus providing input to the improvement of social housing programs.

Keywords: low-income population, quality of low-price housing, quality of urban life, social housing, social housing programs

Received September 27, 2021; Revised November 02, 2021; Accepted November 08, 2021

Citation: Manfred Fehr, Karine Beatriz Pinheiro Fernandes, The Challenge of Attaining Satisfactory Urban Life in Social Housing Programs. Journal of City and Development, 3 (2). 101-105. January 2021. doi:10.12691/jcd-3-2-5

1. Introduction

Urbanization reflects the planning that went into the formulation of projects and investments in the urban space, including all physical facilities necessary for fulfilling the expectations placed on that space in its social context.

A citizen identifies himself or herself with a fixed address, which is his or her residence. In principle, this situation could be satisfied with the possession of a house or apartment, but a citizen does not live separated from the rest of the world. Community life demands the possibility of interaction, which manifests itself through the existence of public roads and access to them, of public transportation, of health care services, of sanitation, of energy, of educational services, of commercial facilities and recreational areas. The sum total of those facilities defines the quality of urbanization.

Planned urbanization also contemplates the ecological sustainability of the territory in order to guarantee its usefulness for future generations [1,2]. A visible consequence of population growth is the housing deficit, which in the case of low-income citizens, is attended to by social housing programs [3]. Public policy directed to reducing poverty, and the resulting housing projects are faced with the challenge of providing not only the residence, but also adequate urban infrastructure. The stakeholders involved in the undertaking are the government through its corresponding departments, the banks that finance the constructions, the construction enterprises and the residents contemplated by the programs. A long process links the moment when the construction of a housing project is initiated with the moment when the person receives his or her house, and this last moment not necessarily represents the happy end.

There is a knowledge gap concerning eventual mishaps that may occur from the moment of moving into the house onwards. The present study is dedicated to filling the knowledge gap with descriptions and information that have the potential to improve the planning and execution of the constructions. Thus, the present study enquires about the road ahead from moving in until reaching satisfactory urban living.

The object of the study is the social-housing program SPark, part of the Brazilian national project called “My house my life”, and delivered to the residents in 2011 with the intention of providing low-income families with access to adequate urban living [4]. It consists of eight units with a total of 3632 houses. The present analysis happened in 2014 in the specific unit called VBrasil with 500 houses. The objective was to determine to which point the mentioned challenge was met in the object program, by comparing the quality of life effectively attained with that originally planned, and to identify and discuss eventual mishaps.

2. Construction and Urbanization of Social Housing Units

The literature supplies evidence of inherent difficulties in planning and constructing social housing units. Environmental degradation can result from inadequate choice of space and inadequate architectural projects [5,6,7]. Deficiencies of construction of houses are not visible at the moment of delivery. They only become evident upon occupation [8,9]. The rapid growth of the city defies planned occupation of space. Municipalities plan and monitor the creation of development sites and new town sectors through their development plan, which contains provisions for social housing units [10,11]. Urbanization is dynamic and modifies spaces to satisfy various social actors. The space changes its shape as new functionalities arise, such as social housing units that substitute prior uses for reasons of priority [12,13,14,15].

3. Methods

The research team contacted all stakeholders involved in the program in order to collect information on the success of the undertaking, but only the residents collaborated. Thus, the research proceeded by visual inspection of the infrastructure and by anonymous interviews with adult residents who all answered the same questions [16,17]. All interviews used the set of 15 questions listed below. The research was descriptive. It observed, registered and analyzed facts without manipulating them, and provided the interviewees with the opportunity to contribute additional personal visions and impressions [18,19,20]. The universe of interviewees consisted of 25 out of the 500 residences of the unit under study, picked arbitrarily. From the answers, the authors constructed illustrative scenarios of occurrences and dilemmas after the occupation of the houses. This procedure allows for going beyond the production of knowledge and initiates the formation of wisdom, in the sense of analyzing the mishaps and correcting the process in order to avoid their recurrence in future undertakings of the sort.

4. List of Questions

1 – Where did you live before moving into this unit? 2 – Were you paying rent or were you living with family members? 3 – How long have you been living in this unit? 4 – How many people live in your house at present? 5 – What is the approximate income of your family? 6 – How long did it take for structural problems to become apparent? 7 – Which are they? 8 – Has your house been invaded, before or after moving in? 9 – Did you register complaint about the problems and with whom? 10 – What was the answer to your complaint? 11 – Was any action taken following your complaint? 12 – How long did it take until you got a satisfactory return on your complaint? 13 – Did you receive any instruction on how to react if future structural problems were to arise? 14 – Did you also try to solve the problems with your own means and why? 15 – Apart from the quality of the houses, there are structural problems with the water and sewage networks, with street pavement, with storm sewers and with electric power distribution. They were reported in the local media. Have you been affected by any of them?

5. Results

The individual residential lots have 200 square meters and include the house with 37 square meters containing two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, a washroom, a sink and a solar heater. The slab above the rooms is made of plastic sheets and hides the wiring. The houses are twins with 37 square meters each and separated by a common wall. The dividing line of the lot passes through the middle of the twin houses. The streets of the unit are paved. The houses are served by water, sewage and electrical energy. The sales contract stipulated monthly payments corresponding to 10% of family income for 10 years [21]. Additional constructions in the lots are permitted as long as they do not use the walls of the house. The housing unit under study stretches over a distance of 1150 meters and shows a level difference of 53 meters [8]. The information on the quality of life within the unit, gathered during the study, concerns the quality of individual residences and the quality of urbanization. As for the quality of construction, visual inspection and interviews identified the following problems. There is no concrete slab. Wiring is exposed. There is no sound isolation. Rain water infiltrates through the roof. Walls are cracked. Steep decline of the lots without protective backing. No paved connection of the house with the street. Insufficient electrical outlets in the house. The ground floor is not impermeable. As for the quality of urbanization, the inspection detected a leisure area with trees but without any infrastructure. There appears to be no architectural design of the project. Consequently, there are no police station, no hospital, no commerce and no storm sewers. The unit has a nursery school, a primary school, a health care facility and a sports and arts center. The security situation is precarious. Residents reported invasions and theft. Three public bus lines connect the unit to the center of town. The local press reported the following mishaps that confirm information from the interviews [8]. There is no acoustic isolation between the twin houses due to the absence of a concrete slab. In some cases, the garden has a fall in level of four meters and forms a useless rut. The electrical energy boxes have no cover. The wiring is exposed. The electrical energy supply cable to the houses is under-dimensioned for normal domestic uses. It burns out if various appliances are connected simultaneously.

The following sample of answers from the residents interviewed illustrates the quality of life in the housing unit.

Interviewee 10 relates the invasion of her house. I went to City Hall to sign the contract. They gave me the address but no key. When I arrived at the address that was to be my house, it was occupied by invaders. It took a few months until the police was called upon to liberate the house by force. When I finally entered my house, there was no door, no window, there were roof tiles missing, there was mold all over. They sent us an inspector who wrote some reports, but doors and windows were not replaced.

The invasions of houses in the unit VBrasil and other units of the program SPark have been extensively reported on in the local press. Example: In the process of delivery of the houses, there occurred invasions of some 600 of them. The bank took the initiative to involve the Department of Justice with the liberation. Acts of vandalism became apparent when the owners entered their homes. Missing items include doors, windows, sinks and toilets [22].

To illustrate the structural problems, here are some stories from interviewees.

Interviewee 1. I had to spend some money to get the house ready for living in it. The roof was leaking. When it rained, the mud from the lot above came down and blocked my door. I had to construct a rim wall.

Interviewee 2. There was infiltration of rainwater in the bathroom and in the kitchen, and the walls were cracked. I had to fix this with my own money.

Interviewee 3. The houses are twins. The neighbor hammered along on his cracked walls, and sure enough, my walls began to crack, too, all of them. The rainwater is all over the house.

Interviewee 4. I had to fix the house before moving in. During that time, I continued paying rent in my former residence. I had to isolate the floor, install the electric wiring, the toilet and the sink. The invaders had taken those items away.

Interviewee 13. The walls were cracked, rainwater infiltrated and mold formed on the walls. The mud from the lot above invaded mine whenever it rained. I had to contract civil workers to take away the mud and build a rim wall.

Interviewee 19. Before moving in, I had to fix the slab, paint the walls, and put a lock on the door.

Interviewee 22. I had to stay here even without toilet and sinks just to avoid the house being invaded again. With time, I bought those items.

Interviewee 25. The mud from the lot above comes rolling down and flows into my house. The invaders had found an intelligent solution. They pierced holes into the walls so the mud could move out by gravity. How do you think I could bring my furniture and move in? I had to start by building a rim wall and fix the holes in the house.

6. Discussion

By way of the interviews, the study identified the three most visible mishaps, namely lack of security, deficiencies in construction and slope of the terrain. The following story illustrates the process of a typical family moving into the residence of their dreams in a social housing program.

The beneficiary terminates the paperwork at City Hall and receives the address and the keys of his or her house. Upon arriving at the house, he or she encounters a clandestine inhabitant who already removed the kitchen sink and asks for a toll payment to leave. The beneficiary returns to City Hall and asks for help. The civil servant in charge promises to take action and asks for patience. Three weeks later, the police kick out the inhabitant, and the beneficiary enters his or her home that does not have a kitchen sink. He or she returns to City Hall and asks for help. The civil servant in charge promises to take action and asks for patience. Three weeks later, the construction company installs the kitchen sink, and the beneficiary washed his or her dishes. The following day it starts to rain. In the absence of a rim wall, and due to the slope of the terrain, the rain carries soil from the neighbor’s lot into his or her lot and blocks the front door. Due to a defective roof, the rainwater enters the house, wets the walls and produces mold. The furniture is damaged. The beneficiary initiates civil works in his or her lot. He or she constructs a rim wall around the lot and repairs the roof. Then he or she substitutes the damaged furniture. Upon trying to connect electric appliances to the net, he or she encounters one only power plug. He or she returns to civil work and installs more plugs. Approximately two years after receiving the key of the house, he or she sits down at the front door and thinks: now I have a home.

The challenge exposed in the title was to reach satisfactory urban life in the housing program. The interviews and visual observations revealed that the challenge was not met. It divided itself into various minor specific challenges, which the study identified. Naturally, two basic questions arose: What are the motives of the problems and how could they be overcome? In what follows, the authors venture into a practical as well as philosophical exercise with the aim of making a contribution to the improvement of social housing programs. The reason for being of the programs is to gather low income families in one specific space. This procedure responds to limited financial resources in the municipal budget. Consequently, the argument of induced social segregation is innocuous. Social segregation is a natural phenomenon in the sense that in all cities, the inhabitants occupy their spaces as function of their social class in order to feel comfortable. The process of urbanization is not spontaneous. The infrastructure required for satisfactory urban life does not appear by miracle. The city centers took decades to reach their present situation, and even so, the situation is dynamic. Improvements occur constantly in response to new demands. Horizontal condominiums of high standards integrate modern infrastructure from the start and pass the bill on the residents. It is not reasonable to expect replication of this procedure in social housing programs. Their budget does not support it. The specific challenge, then, is not to create false expectations and inform the beneficiaries from the start about the existing limitations. The unit under study here already disposed of electrical energy, water and sewage service, public transport to the city center, nursery and primary school, a health unit and a sports and recreation facility. The urbanization only was incomplete for the lack of a police station, a hospital, a shopping area and storm water collection. If the public administrators had described this situation to the beneficiaries, it could have avoided many of the complaints stated in the interviews and at the same time stimulated the formation of a citizens’ association for negotiating the missing infrastructure. The security aspect that appeared repeatedly in the interviews is so obvious that there is no excuse for its occurrence. There is no logic in constructing houses and then leaving them empty without surveillance. Any urban resident knows this. There was an administrative omission. This point is the easiest to be resolved immediately.

The engineering problems enter in two aspects: terrain preparation and house construction. The strong slope of the terrain provoked landslides that blocked the access to some houses. The origin of those mishaps is either the incorrect choice of space, or faulty engineering design, or both. Apparently, there was no project for the outlay of the unit, or else it was not evaluated by the engineering council. This is a case of professional omission on the part of the responsible administrators and represents a lesson for future projects. As for the quality of the houses, there is a fundamental error of procedure. The pretended quality of construction ought to be defined at the start. There is no point in building houses without a clear objective and later on be caught in interminable law suites about fixing the damage unsatisfactorily. The lesson that this study produced is not to create false expectations. Both the constructor and the future resident need to agree from the start on the type of residence that will be built and delivered, or at least know at which phase of the construction a house can be considered a residence. As an example, if the promise contemplates a house with access to electrical energy, but it has only one power plug, expectance and reality do not meet. If the house is sold for 100 monetary units, and the resident has to spend another 75 monetary units in order to turn it into a home, the expectance, again, is frustrated. If this type of facts were made known at the time a person applies for a house of the program, he or she possibly would consider other options at this important moment of their lives.

7. Conclusion

The study attained its objective of describing the remaining work and effort after receiving the key of the house in the social unit considered. It identified the main challenges of the social housing program. The first one refers to security and surveillance. Finished houses not yet occupied are easy targets of invasions. The second one refers to the architectural project of the area. In spaces with accentuated slopes, rain will always transport its waters and the carried soil to the lowest point. A professional project provides infrastructure that will inhibit that transport. The third one refers to the quality of construction. A roof that does not keep the rain out is no roof.

The mishaps are consequences of relatively obvious omissions that may be controlled easily by competent administrators. This study identified and published them as a contribution to the improvement of social housing programs.

Conflict of Interest

The authors do not have any conflicts of interest.

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