{"id":216670,"date":"2016-05-03T17:58:39","date_gmt":"2016-05-03T20:58:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/?p=216670"},"modified":"2016-05-03T17:58:39","modified_gmt":"2016-05-03T20:58:39","slug":"housing-as-a-commodity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/housing-as-a-commodity\/","title":{"rendered":"Housing as a commodity"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\u201cEvictions:

Juan Carlos Rojas \/ Notimex<\/span>\u201cEvictions: an organized crime\u201d reads a sign at a 2013 protest in Madrid. Some mortgage holders were left homeless but still in debtJuan Carlos Rojas \/ Notimex<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

For six years \u2013 from 2008 to 2014 \u2013 the architect and urban planner Raquel Rolnik served as Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing for the United Nations (UN), which led her to undertake two visits per year to countries with different housing contexts, policies, and circumstances.\u00a0 Despite these differences, Rolnik, who is a professor at the School of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (FAU-USP), managed to identify pieces of a global process that she calls the financialization of cities \u2013 a process that does not exclude Brazil.\u00a0 Rolnik presents her reflections on her experience at the UN in the newly released book Guerra dos lugares: A coloniza\u00e7\u00e3o da terra e da moradia na era das finan\u00e7as <\/i><\/em>(War between places: the colonization of land and housing in the age of finance), published by Boitempo Editorial.\u00a0 Two chapters are devoted to the world scenario and one to Brazil.<\/p>\n

One of Rolnik\u2019s first visits was to the United States in 2009 at the height of the housing crisis that had begun two years earlier, now known as the subprime crisis, a reference to bank loans offered to low-income clientele.\u00a0 Borrowers from this economic stratum previously had no access to home loans because they were deemed \u201chigh risk.\u201d\u00a0 The collapse of the mortgage system, or bursting of the real estate bubble \u2013 epicenter of a world economic crisis \u2013 pointed Rolnik down a trail.\u00a0 \u201cIt was clear that the prevailing world paradigm for housing policies is the idea that housing is an individual commodity obtained through the market,\u201d the urban planner says.\u00a0 \u201cMore than a commodity, the production of housing became an investment asset, a new source of revenue for the capital market.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the case of the United States, the government allowed the offer of real estate credit to be accompanied by a process of securitization \u2013 that is, the launching of other mortgage-backed securities like titles and bonds that created a profitable secondary market for banks.\u00a0 This phenomenon also increased the supply of funds for loans, pushed up demand for more expensive real estate, and boosted housing prices themselves, often triggering a need for further loans.\u00a0 When prices could climb no higher \u2013 when the bubble burst \u2013 mortgage costs rose, debt accumulated, and foreclosures began.\u00a0 Given the transnational nature of financial markets, the situation repeated itself the world over, even in such far-off countries with distinct historical backgrounds as Kazakhstan and Croatia, both members of the former communist bloc.\u00a0 \u201cPeople in the United States lost their homes to banks, while elsewhere, like Spain, they were evicted but were still left with debts to pay,\u201d reports Rolnik.<\/p>\n

\"My

Olga Leiria \/ Olhar Imagem <\/span>My Home My Life housing project in Londrina, Paran\u00e1: public-funded project, private profitsOlga Leiria \/ Olhar Imagem <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

While the strongest, most immediate impact of this process falls on the right to land and housing for the poorest and most socially vulnerable \u2013 the target of popular housing initiatives \u2013 its repercussions affect the whole of society.\u00a0 \u201cThe financialization model gradually replaces all other housing policies and ways of producing housing,\u201d says Rolnik.\u00a0 Even in places like Britain, where housing shortages had been only a minor issue thanks to post-World War II social welfare policies, finance capital is advancing.\u00a0 Discarding a social housing system that kept rent affordable, the country embraced a process of transferring property to tenants.\u00a0 Today Britain is one of the developed countries where the residential mortgage market accounts for more than 50% of gross domestic product.<\/p>\n

Nowhere in the world have government initiatives been transferred into private hands for the sake of relieving the state of a burden.\u00a0 Much as this might seem to be the case \u2013 and declarations by government officials reinforce this notion \u2013 these processes have instead been led and regulated by the state itself, using funds right out of public coffers or through income tax exemptions (an example of the latter was Britain\u2019s transfer of homeownership to tenants at low prices).\u00a0 \u201cIn the version of this model in countries like Mexico, Chile, South Africa, and Brazil, the government provides direct subsidies to families so they can buy products on the real estate market, which are mass produced on homogeneous peripheries that have become bedroom communities,\u201d says Rolnik.<\/p>\n

Although the globalized, expansionist nature of capital markets means housing policies around the world share common traits, the researcher warns against the danger of seeing financialization as a top-down process, like some kind of imperialist force.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s important to stress that each country\u2019s experience is unique,\u201d Rolnik states.\u00a0 \u201cThe logic of the model depends on locally constructed political hegemony.\u201d\u00a0 Each country tailors its procedures so it does not drive off the funds needed for its projects.\u00a0 \u201cThis helps us understand how the financialization of housing and urban land is taking root in Brazil through the federal housing program Minha Casa Minha Vida<\/i><\/em> (My Home My Life), under a coalition government led by the Workers Party (PT), which has an anti-neoliberal discourse and a developmentalist proposal,\u201d adds Rolnik, who was national secretary of the Ministry of Cities\u2019 Urban Programs from 2003 to 2007, during Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva\u2019s first term as president.<\/p>\n

\"Foreclosed

Justin Sullivan \/ AFP<\/span>Foreclosed home during subprime crisis in the United States in 2009, after the bubble burstJustin Sullivan \/ AFP<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

According to Rolnik, after the demise of Brazil\u2019s military dictatorship, public housing policy still followed the basic model that underpinned the 1964 creation of the National Housing Bank (BNH).\u00a0 Working with the construction industry, the federal government promised to \u201cmake every worker a homeowner.\u201d\u00a0 Since 1967, the system has been financed with public money through the Guarantee Fund for Length of Service (FGTS).\u00a0 Rolnik observed the occurrence of coordinated actions between financial capital and leaders of the PT prior to the 2009 creation of the My Home My Life program, especially leaders with ties to the union movement and pension funds.\u00a0 She also noted that links were forged between these groups and the corporate real estate sector, which builds office towers, shopping centers, and hotels and has the closest relations with international finance capital.\u00a0 During this period, many Brazilian construction companies went public.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe program was so successful that municipalities and states abandoned their own projects, and My Home My Life became Brazil\u2019s only housing policy,\u201d says Rolnik, who confirmed this finding in the field through both a FAPESP-supported study as well as her participation in an investigation funded by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) and the Ministry of Cities.\u00a0 The \u201cfew municipalities in S\u00e3o Paulo that had their own social housing system\u201d did away with them.\u00a0 Rolnik also sees a relation between the process of financialization and urban reforms based on displacement, like those connected with mega-sporting events in Brazil.\u00a0 Under the pretext of expropriating land for what the government deems priority purposes, extremely valuable real estate that is occupied by informal settlements passes into the hands of private capital.\u00a0 \u201cWe thought the political tendency as far as favelas in Rio de Janeiro, for example, was no longer to remove but improve,\u201d laments Alex Ferreira Magalh\u00e3es of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro\u2019s Institute for Research and Urban and Regional Planning (Ippur-UFRJ).<\/p>\n

This is the meaning of \u201cwar between places,\u201d the expression used to entitle Rolnik\u2019s book. Vera Telles, professor with the Department of Sociology at USP\u2019s School of Philosophy, Literature and Human Sciences (FFLCH\/USP), compares this concept with the notion of \u201caccumulation by dispossession\u201d that was developed by British geographer David Harvey, who sees a \u201clogic of expropriation\u201d in prevailing public policies. Taking it a step further, Telles cites the Dutch sociologist Saskia Sassen, who argues that this is in fact a logic of expulsion: through war, environmental destruction, and situations that produce refugees \u2013 along with other phenomena \u2013 these policies free up real estate that creates powerful markets when rebuilt.<\/p>\n

Project
\n<\/b><\/strong>Territorial planning and financing of urban development in municipalities in the state of S\u00e3o Paulo: advances and setbacks (n\u00ba 2010\/06580-6<\/a>); Grant Mechanism<\/b><\/strong>\u00a0Regular Research Grant; Principal Investigator<\/b><\/strong>\u00a0Raquel Rolnik (FAU-USP); Investment <\/b><\/strong>R$55,197.<\/p>\n

Book
\n<\/b><\/strong>ROLNIK, R. Guerra dos lugares: A coloniza\u00e7\u00e3o da terra e da moradia na era das finan\u00e7as<\/strong>. S\u00e3o Paulo: Boitempo, 2015, 424 pp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Research shows that public housing has become an investment asset ","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[225,256,265],"coauthors":[137],"class_list":["post-216670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanities","tag-economy","tag-public-policies","tag-urbanism"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216670\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216670"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=216670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}