5) Description of housing product/service offering: The main product we are introducing is in fact a process. It is a collaborative work of a team of architects, engineers, economists, psycologists, social workers, the city council and an association of homeless people, joining forces to create a pilot housing project as a model for the new loan system for housing in Brazil (Crédito Solidário). The Ministry of Science and Technology of Brazil funded this applied research project with the intention to develop strategies of design, self-management, and sustainability for low- income housing with the dwellers’ involvement in the whole process. It is intended as a participative design process to tackle the housing shortage in Brazil by providing financing possibilities for families whose income is lower than 3 minimum wages (less than US$ 500). These families represent the great majority of the Brazilian homeless people. Our role in this project is to create a methodology for participatory design and self-management in four steps: i) the digital inclusion of the community, which aims not only to make community members familiar with computers but also to make them familiar with the basics of architectural representation and to get involved with the design process. ii) the participative design process of the dwelling unit, which aims to define which features are of collective and individual decisions, and also those that are unacceptable and wished for. iii) the design of the housing itself, which takes into account the results of community participation in the previous stages. iv) the development of video games with content related to construction, for increasing participation of the community in the discussion of construction questions.

6) Description of innovation: Our approach of participatory design and self-management is unique not only as a methodological process but mainly as a means to make the new government loan program possible. Our previous research has already shown that the future dwellers’ involvement in the whole process is crucial for their engagement in self-construction and also for their satisfaction with their final dwelling. One of the differences of our approach is to work with digital inclusion with content related to housing. This process overcomes the mere digital literacy as it enables the community to negotiate their spaces among themselves and with the design team. Another innovation of our approach is to define what can be taken as fixed and what can be taken as flexible in order to guarantee low cost and high value of use of all dwelling units. This differs to previous approaches such as Habraken’s support and infill, and also Open building, as our methodology intends to make the housing cheaper by learning from sample groups of families which are their priorities regarding spatial configurration and hierarchy. As a result the units are embryos fixing those features collectively decided and leaving open to dwellers half of the floor area of each dwelling unit, so they can decide individually on their living spaces without making the housing more expensive. Another innovation is the use of interactive computer games as a tool for learning the basics of construction, making the community more open to engage in the building- site. The main innovation, however, is to support the new government loan program by empowering the community to manage and build their housing settlement with the least financial resources as possible. The difference of this to previous approaches is that the government is lending the money (interest free) instead of funding the whole housing construction. This innitiative intends to start bridging a historical gap of housing shortage in Brazil.

7) Benefits to clients: Since 1980 the homeless association movements in Brazil have been conquering a series of benefits from the government as they have organized themselves as a strong urban movement. However, most low-income families have not benefit from these conquests as the biggest difficulty found is the need to legally form an autonomous co-op in order to be entitled to any sort of financing. The new credit program is a step further as it only finances associations or cooperatives, which makes people to organize themselves before having their loan approved. Our work is to create a participatory methodology to enable low-income associations to self-manage the design process and the building of their dwellings. Thus, we are also developing the mechanism to be used to reach out to the community, which is a set of procedures to direct the whole participatory design process, from the articulation of the community to the design of the building itself to the construction. This set of procedures follows the free software movement and is copyleft, which means that anyone can use it and improve it as they wish. It will be part of the new credit program, whose objective is to “attend the housing needs of low income citizens by financing the final beneficiaries, organized in co-operatives or housing association”. This means that all families with income up to 3 minimum wages will need to join or form an association to be able to get the loan, which only will be available together with our proposed set of procedures to facilitate the self-management. The self-management process is a condition imposed by the government, as previous research and practice in Brazil have already proven that it has significant lower cost than the usual formal construction enterprise. Our proposed set of procedures will lower even more the costs as we propose not only the self-construction but a full involvement and trainning of the community for all stages of the process.

8) Key operational partnerships: Because of our previous accumulated experience in digital inclusion and housing research, FINEP (technology innovation agency of the Ministry of Science and Technology) hired with the Projects Department of our School (EAUFMG) the elaboration of a model to enable the construction of housing of social interest in the self-management regime, incorporating principles of the common-interest economy, of community participation, digital inclusion and environmental, social, and economic sustainability (through job and income creation). This model is not abstract, since it is an applied research aiming to actually build housing for 77 homeless families, as a pilot experiment of the Common-Interest Credit Program. This program is to be operated by the Caixa Econômica Federal (Federal Economy Bank). The project groups professors, researchers, and undergraduate and graduate students of the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais (PUCMINAS), as well as Belo Horizonte City Hall technicians and leaders of the ASCA-BH (Homeless Association of Belo Horizonte). Its main goal is to link technical and scientific knowledge developed at the UFMG and PUCMINAS with the current housing policy of the Brazilian government in attention to social movements for housing and urban reform. Its main result should be 77 dwelling units and a report with recommendations for further development and improvement of the Credit Program.

9) Financial model: Our set of procedures for self-management and recommendations for the improvement of the Credit Program results from our research of the pilot project, including the post-living evaluation, which enables us to evalutate all costs and processes adopted. This means that even if any procedure we use is not the most affordable, we can learn from it and suggest a new approach for future developments. Thus, we learn from both the process and from the post-living evaluation, which will show the problems with the product. The whole initiative of this project and the new credit program is supposed to attend only the low-income population, which has been systematically excluded from any sort of previous financial programs.

          • Costs as percentage of income: 70%

          • Financing: Our project has two sources of financing. The first is the research funding from FINEP, which is invested in the creation of the participatory methodology; the second source is directed to the building process, which is a composition of funding from the City Council (donation of the plot and 20% of each dwelling unit cost), and the loan from the Credit Program. The research investment is only required in this project, and the results of it can be replicated with no cost. The Credit Program will enable the provision of much more dwellings than previous donation programs. As a self-sustainable model, this project not only intends to provide housing and construction trainning but also to articulate the community with professional trainning to generate their own income.

10) Effectiveness

          • Project outcomes: Up to now our project has trainned more than 100 representatives of homeless families with digital inclusion strategies. The dwelling units have been collectively discussed and are about to be built, only waiting the approval of the Bank, which is taking a bit long as it is the first time this sort of financing happens. We can say that so far 77 famillies are benefiting from our program. However, all members of the families, including those that do not participate yet of our training programs, as also the low-income neighborhood, will also benefit with the construction.

          • Number of clients in past year: It is the first year of the project, as we have started in the middle of 2005. The first step was to develop the digital interfaces for the trainning of the community and also to develop the first studies of the area where the housing will be locate

          • Percentage of clients that are poor or marginalized: 100

          • Potential demand: The housing shortage in Brazil is close to 10,000,000 units, the great majority of which are families whose earns sums less than 3 minimun wages. The proposed Credit Program aims to cope with this shortage. Even if our project is modest and has no intention to produce more than one housing development (77 families), we believe that the participatory methodology resulting from it will be incorporated in the Credit Program and can indirectly achieve millions of people. This kind of Credit Program along with the set of procedures for participatory design, management and building we are developing, can be replicated in most Latin-American countries which are similar to Brazil. We believe it can also be adapted to other situations, such Africa and India. However we do not have enough knowledge of these countries to say how easy or direct it will be to adjust our methodology.

11) Scaling up strategy

          • Stage of the initiative: Start Up stage.

          • Expansion plan: The research project will finish in the end of 2008, when the housing will be built (finished in the end of 2007) and the evaluation of post-living will be done (one year of post-living support). The national government intends to keep the Credit Program as long as it is needed. The team of architects and social workers that worked in this research intends to join forces to set up a cooperative to provide technical assistance for future housing developments which will benefit from this new Credit Program.

12) Origin of the initiative: In 2005 the Ministry of Cities created the Common-Interest Credit Program, to be operated by the Federal Economy Bank of Brazil. At this point FINEP (technology innovation agency of the Ministry of Science and Technology) hired with the Projects Department of EAUFMG the elaboration of a model to enable the construction of housing of social interest in the self-management regime, incorporating principles of the common-interest economy, of community participation, digital inclusion and environmental, social, and economic sustainability (job and income creation). Professor Maria Lucia Malard and her team at EVA (Virtual Studio of Architecture) were chosen due to their experience. Since 1996 they develop research using advanced graphic computing resources to give support to the participation of the community in the planning and housing production for the low-income population.

Contact Information:
Maria Lucia  Malard
Professor of Architecture
Escola de Arquitetura da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
(academic program)
Rua Paraiba 697, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, CEP 30.130-140
Brazil
Tel: 55 31 3269 1812 or 55 31 8715 1218
Email: baltazar.ana@gmail.com
Website: www.arq.ufmg.br/eva