Minha Casa Minha Vida Progress to Date

About three years ago (March 2009 to be precise) the Brazilian Government finally launched a long-awaited scheme to try and ease the country’s chronic housing shortage. After long consideration it was decided that the main aim in this particular programme was to build and provide decent, affordable homes for people of modest incomes to buy.

It was intended that the approach would be a combined one of the type known as PPP (Public-private partnership) elsewhere in the world but that this co-operative venture between the two sectors would be one especially tailored for Brazilian conditions. One feature was the seeking of short to medium term private investment, with firm guarantees
.
Obviously other social housing schemes also existed in the country and these continued in parallel, mainly targeting the rental sector.

However, this new purchasers’ scheme was something quite novel. It was dubbed ‘Minha Casa Minha Vida’ (My house, My life) and was intended to provide people of the burgeoning lower middle classes with a property-owning stake in their country, for the very first time. To assist them, a whole new range of mortgages for individuals was created and launched, of a type which hadn’t existed up to then.
To put the scheme ’in a nutshell’, the aim is to build three million new homes of this kind by the end of 2014, carefully distributed throughout the regions and states of Brazil. The project is now well into its second phase of development and has proved, as expected, immensely popular. This is so much true that when local schemes are launched, there is a draw among eligible applicants to determine priority of allocation (at least among those on the more modest incomes of the two levels of eligibility).

There are firm qualifying conditions for both levels. The main one is to keep the scheme for the people it is intended for. For example, applicants on the basic rung may only have incomes up to three times minimum wage and be pre-allocated suitable mortgages by Caixa. Tighter conditions apply to the ‘upper tier’ of people on incomes of between 3 and 10 times the minimum wage. These particular homes are sold by real-estate agents according to ‘first come first served’.

There is no doubt that  Minha Casa Minha Vida is fulfilling its promise of making a significant dent in the country’s housing shortage. Brazilians acknowledge that there is still far to go before homelessness has been eradicated but they are justifiably proud of this scheme. The Ecohouse Group has, if anything, been even more proud to be in the forefront of this marvellous project

DILMA ANNOUNCES MINHA CASA MINHA VIDA CHANGE

Last week on International Women’s Day an important new change to Minha Casa Minha Vida regarding women was announced by President Dilma Rousseff. From now on, if a couple in the scheme separates or divorces, the woman will get priority of tenure and ownership of the house they bought with government help.

However, not everyone in the Administration agrees with this announcement or the thinking and sentiments behind it.

For instance, Ronaldo Cramer, the Attorney General sought to remind the President that interventions of this kind were not strictly legal and in fact were interfering in a matter beyond Government remit.




Defending the change, Dilma proclaimed that she sees an important part of her job as “doing more for women”. In Brazil, despite many strides in recent years and decades, full equality of the genders in society is still far from a reality.

In the Minha Casa Minha Vida programme, there are several levels of government assistance, depending on the income of the family involved.

This latest ruling in favour of the female partner is intended to apply to the most basic. This is where the household income is up to three times the statutory minimum wage, where government subsidises the purchase of the home by up to ninety-five percent of the price (mortgage, not gift).

Commentators remark that this new amendment to the terms of the deal are in keeping with other schemes designed to help those on modest incomes. This is quoted as including other programmes such as Bolsa Familia, where help is focused on heads of households. There are exceptions of course, but in most cases when a couple splits, it is of course the woman who remains with the children. It is that feature of Brazilian life that the government says is informing their thinking in these matters.