Social Housing in Sustainable City

The paper investigates how the issue of housing has been treated by urban policy in Brazil to meet the legislation defining the social function of urban property as one of the goals of reaching sustainable city. The object of evaluation is the federal government programs of the past 10 years since the adoption of the Urban Policy City Statute, aimed at reducing the housing deficit of low-income by the use of the instrument of regularization involving, in the Brazilian case, the participation of the community resident in the project area, the implementation of infrastructure and titling of land to families. It is found that urban sustainability in the Statute, has focused on social equity and democratic management, essential aspects for sustainability, but not exhausted. It is noteworthy that much of the land regularization programs occurs in urban areas environmentally fragile, specifically borders of rivers and hillsides. The results of urban land regularization processes of social interest are unimpressive considering the researchs on the irregularity of urban occupation. Illustrates the fragility of these results, the confrontation between the database Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics 2010, and numbers of the federal program of regularization. The 2010 Census showed that 11.4 million people live in informal settlements, which corresponds to 3.2 million residential units. The program's goal was to serve 364,000 homes, but reached in fact 46 000, which means less than 2% of the total residential units located in areas irregular. As the principal results of the analysis: misconceptions of statistical measures, that considers a single house as different types of irregularity, or because there are areas not surveyed in the census; inconsistencies in the definitions of program indicators, whose main focus is on the titration, not considering improvements in the areas of infrastructure and urbanization; low investments in regularization programs.