Vertical incremental housing in São Paulo. The case of Minha Casa Minha Vida–Entidades

Abstract

Incremental housing allows people to gradually appropriate urban space for their own use. The question remains how housing incrementalism relates to planning strategies for densification and revitalisation within dense urban cores, which can generate socio-spatial exclusion. Vertical incremental housing may offer the benefit of integrating incrementalism in well serviced urban areas but faces challenges in terms of higher land costs, technical complexity and development risk. This article presents an analysis of vertical incremental housing within the framework of the Brazilian Minha Casa Minha Vida–Entidades (MCMV-E) programme. MCMV-E allows social organisations to act as executive agents of housing policy. Under the MCMV-E programme, social organisations control federal funds for transforming vacant real estate into housing for low-income households. Despite its quantitative and qualitative significance, MCMV-E has received limited assessment in the academic literature. Whereas the literature to date has dismissed the programme in terms of its socio-spatial consequences, this paper analysis offers a more nuanced reading, arguing that MCMV-E has allowed low-income residents to successfully acquire housing in central and well serviced locations.