DEVELOPMENT-BRAZIL: A Multi-Pronged Approach to Urban Poverty

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 4 2001 (IPS) - Santo André will be the only Brazilian city represented at this week’s United Nations conference on urban development in New York, where it will showcase an outstanding project that has combined action on many fronts to tackle the problem of urban poverty.

This city of 650,000 near Sao Paulo, Brazil’s biggest urban centre and industrial capital, located in the southeast, began to implement its ambitious “Integrated Programme for Social Inclusion” in 1997.

The beneficiaries of the pilot phase of the programme are the residents of four favelas (shanty-towns), with a total of 3,540 families made up of 16,042 individuals, Miriam Belchior, Santo André’s municipal secretary for Social Inclusion and Housing, told IPS.

The programme includes urban planning measures, temporary income assistance for families with children in school, literacy campaigns, skills training, assistance obtaining micro-credit and setting up cooperatives and small businesses, health care and education.

The most innovative aspect of the undertaking consists of its effort to address the problem of urban poverty in a number of areas simultaneously: “everything at the same time in one single place” in order to generate “synergy,” explained the official, who underlined community participation as another key factor.

It is important to avoid “a sectorial logic,” said Belchior, because urban planning alone, or education and health care provided in an isolated manner cannot suffice to “break the vicious circle of poverty.” But for the beneficiaries, decent housing “is the basis for everything,” she added.

The Istanbul+5 meeting running Tuesday through Friday in the UN’s New York headquarters will assess the progress in urban development made five years after the Second Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) held in Istanbul.

“Never again a mouse-infested hovel!” rejoiced Hilda Pereira de Carvalho Silva, who said her family of 11 – made up of her husband, four children, five grandchildren and herself – would soon be moving into their new three-story home in Santo André.

The old wooden shacks of the favela of Sacadura Cabral, where Pereira de Carvalho Silva acts as vice-president of the local residents’ association, have been gradually replaced by brick and cement houses as part of the urban development scheme that includes the laying in of a sewerage system and paved streets, and the regularisation of property ownership.

The works required curbing overcrowding in the area, and 200 of the 748 local families were moved to buildings near Sacadura Cabral.

Meanwhile, the rest of the families who had their hovels bulldozed to make way for the new homes have been put up in temporary housing or camps, including the 124 families packed into a nearby building that once served as a prison.

The Carvalho Silvas have been eagerly awaiting the completion of their new house since moving out of their old home seven months ago.

For others, things have taken even longer. Angelina Nunes de Oliveira has been waiting for two years, because the first home she was assigned turned out to be too small for her family of 10.

Each family has been allotted a plot of 45 square metres on average. Since the largest plots are only 50 square metres in size, houses for bigger families must expand upwards instead of sideways, explained Marcia de Oliveira, the Social Assistant of the Santo André mayor’s office.

The urban planning effort includes the widening and paving of streets through which garbage and cooking gas delivery trucks can pass.

The aim is to forge a new relationship between the neighbourhood and the rest of the city, and to “leave the phenomenon of the ‘ghetto’ behind,” said Belchior.

But decent housing and proper streets are not enough. Without improvements on other fronts, like education and guarantees of a minimum income for each family, true inclusion is not possible, and local residents could be forced to “eat their houses” – in other words, sell them to survive, said the official.

Thus, the urban development aspect of the project has included the creation of an area where individual business enterprises or cooperatives will be set up by locals or people from outside the neighbourhood. A community centre is also under construction, the activities of which will be designed by local residents themselves.

The Integrated Programme for Social Inclusion will also entail regular stipends for families with children in school, which will be made available for a year and a half while the family is assisted in becoming financially independent, through vocational training or help starting up a small business or some other income- earning activity.

Micro-loans granted by the People’s Bank are another instrument being used to foment the entrepreneurial capacity of favela- dwellers.

Four cooperatives have been created so far. In Sacadura Cabral, 32 women joined together to set up a dressmaking venture, although the number of members has shrunk to 11, said the group’s leader, Angelina Nunes de Oliveira.

“Cooperativism is difficult” because it demands great discipline and dedication and working many days without pay until the enterprise gets on its feet, said Nunes de Oliveira.

However, experience elsewhere indicates that desertion is normal in the first stages of any cooperative, and that only the most determined remain, while their success eventually attracts new members, she explained.

Youth and adult literacy campaigns, health assistance provided by nurses and community health agents, back-up classes for children having trouble at school, and sports installations are other components of the Integrated Programme for Social Inclusion.

The project, which has been included on the “Best Practices” list of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat), enjoys the support of the UN Urban Management Programme, the Inter- American Development Bank and the European Union.

Two other Latin American cities – Bogota, the capital of Colombia, and Villa El Salvador in Peru – will also present their own successful projects this week in New York.