Metropolitan Dimension of Social Housing Policy

Abstract

The last decade (2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010) has been characterized by the resumption of the protagonism of housing policy in Brazil, with the consolidation of instruments and policies that have formed a consistent framework to address the issue in the country. However, despite the concentration of the problem in metropolitan areas, the policy and the national housing plan have essentially adopted municipal strategies. Given this context, how can the obstacles and limits to the regional articulation of municipal housing policies in metropolitan regions be discussed? We start from the assumption that, while regional articulation is inevitable, the planning and management arrangements and instruments available have structural limitations that make the integration of municipal policies unfeasible. To discuss this issue, a previous question must be answered: how to investigate the factors that condition the integration of housing policies in metropolitan regions? This is the question that this article seeks to answer, resulting in the proposition of an analytical investigative structure that underlies future studies in this field.