Too Much Business and Few Policies: The Role of Major Construction Companies in the Housing Program “Minha Casa, Minha Vida” in Non-Metropolitan Cities in Brazil

Brazil is now passing through an unprecedented moment regarding housing production due to the large volume of public funds focused in just one single program: the "Minha Casa, Minha Vida" (PMCMV). It was released in 2009 with the goal of building 3.4 million housing units in six years only. Since then, the role of the real estate market was consolidated in Brazilian contemporary housing policy, which had already been outlining since the late 1990s, characterized by the performance of major construction companies and by the scale and standardized production housing throughout the country. This geographic expansion covered cities and regions that weren’t major companies’ priorities so far, such as São Paulo state country cities and other states capitals (beyond the axis Rio-São Paulo), causing significant changes in the local real estate dynamics and in the socio-spatial configurations in these cities. This article aims to analyze such changes under two different approaches that are related to each other. The first looks at how the production of PMCMV is revealed socio-spatially in non-metropolitan areas, having as territorial focus, the cities in central region of São Paulo state, in which it is possible to note the high concentration of housing units produced by only a few major construction companies. The second approach focuses on understanding the production structure of PMCMV, starting from the analysis of a major company that currently accounts for 10% of the housing units hired by the PMCMV and 30% of the units in the study area. The hypothesis is that the recent phase of housing production is controlled by a market policy, rather than a housing policy, in which the state provides funds and companies design and produce the city, delineating a private conception of urban design and housing product.