Manfred Fehr^1,, Karine Beatriz Pinheiro Fernandes¹

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.

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