Cristina Silva dos Santos is close to realizing a dream she has had for 28 years, since giving birth to the first of six children: a home big enough for her entire family.
For now, she and her five youngest are squeezed into a four-room, rough-brick house the size of most garages, where they all sleep in the same room.
But a new government housing program, the largest in Latin America aimed at cutting overcrowding in slums, will give Silva a substantial down payment on a 30.680 US dollar (54.000 Real) home with two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and bathroom.
The program, “My Home, My Life,” is a model for developing countries trying to alleviate the squalor surrounding roughly 1 billion squatters and slum dwellers worldwide, according to one expert
The housing pro-gramme received the second-largest pledge of govern-ment funding after the energy sector in the second round of Brazils accele-rated growth pro-gramme – PAC 2 – announced in March.
The sum promised for housing amounted to more than a quarter of the overall infra-structure spending package.
Cecilia Martínez Leal, the Rio-based head of the Latin American regional bureau of HABITAT, the UN urban development agency, says she was impressed by the scale of resources Brazil was putting into the sector.
– They are also working hand-in-hand with communities, which is a good example of how housing should be handled, Martinez Leal notes.
“My Home, My Life” aspires to transform the favelas into more formal and hospitable living areas, complete with security, recreational areas and public utilities.
Another goal is to remove homes from areas at high risk of landslides and flooding, such as the slum in Niteroi, a city of about 500.000 souls across the bay from Rio de Janeiro, where 60 houses were destroyed last month during heavy rains.
At least 232 people were killed in the Niteroi landslide and others in Rio de Janeiro state.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
