Home ownership woes in Brasilia

BRASILIA, Brazil — And you thought U.S. home owners had problems. Here in Brazil’s 2,200-square-mile Federal District, over half a million residents "own" houses on land that is not and never was officially theirs. Oops.

When this planned city studded with iconic architecture by Oscar Niemeyer was built in central Brazil in the 1950s (and inaugurated as the new capital in 1960), officials didn’t foresee the population ballooning to nearly 2.5 million half a century later. And the government didn’t bother finalizing the purchases of many of the privately-owned tracts set aside for the district. So for the last two decades, with migration to Brasilia on the rise, housing became scarce and prices skyrocketed. Entire neighborhoods for tens of thousands of residents were erected in illegal land grabs, known here as “invasions.”

Though it is common throughout Brazil for the poor to build on land they don’t own, in Brasilia about a third of the residents living on pilfered property are solidly middle or upper-middle class, and ironically they are often government employees.  

Paulo and Vania Moraes are typical. He teaches college courses and works in the Ministry of Education; she works for the Ministry of Health. Both grew up in houses in Brasilia’s more innocent times, but by the time they were married, they could barely afford a small apartment in the original designed city, known locally as the Pilot Plan.

So in 2000, they bought a parcel of land dotted with mango trees in Colorado II outside Sobradinho, one of the “satellite cities,” that ring the low-slung Pilot Plan. They claim that as far as they knew, it was above board. “We thought the guy who owned the ranch had divided it into lots,” said Paulo Moraes. “We didn’t know someone had invaded someone else’s land.”

They built an airy, pastel-colored house with a swimming pool, barbecue pit and a sweeping view of the savannah for their family-to-be, which now includes two young daughters. Total cost: about 167,000 reais, or $69,000 at today’s exchange rates. The area has become a quiet, friendly neighborhood of 70 families living in houses from modest to chic.

But life in an “irregular” city comes with a confusing mix of official and self-provided services. The mail comes to the gate of Colorado II, but the government won’t deliver it to the houses; same goes, in the reverse direction, for garbage. The residents had to lay their own electric lines, but the electric company implicitly recognized their existence by turning on the switch. There are no public schools or police posts nearby.

Leading the regularization effort for residents across the district is Junia Bittencourt, president of UNICA-DF, a district-wide association of residents living in unofficial communities. She is a talkative advocate whose gleam-in-the-eye has not entirely been extinguished by the mind-numbing details of a long political and bureaucratic slog.

Through the years of development, she said, government officials often turned a blind eye — or lent a corrupt helping hand — to developers. Or, actually were the developers.

“People ended up buying because they knew their was no official deed but the transaction had the appearance of legality, because no one criticized it,” said Bittencourt. “Land was sold by realtors, it was advertised in the newspaper.”

Surprisingly, many in the government agree.

“The government did not open access for housing, and didn’t monitor the use of land,” said Cassio Taniguchi, the district’s secretary of urban development. “The land-grabbers took advantage of the situation.” Taniguchi — a former two-term mayor of Curitiba, which is considered a model of Brazilian urban planning — has prioritized designating new land for legitimate, less dense development, and also supports regularization. Last month, the district government approved a plan to reclassify most of the land these homes were built on from rural to urban, an important step.

Razing billions of dollars of homes and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless may be a political and practical non-starter. But the alternative won’t be easy, either.

Under the current governor, Jose Roberto Arruda (who took power in 2007) a department was created to streamline the regularization process, bringing together the hodgepodge of authorities to reduce red tape. Paulo Serejo, whom Arruda appointed manager of regularization that same year, said that 320 tracts housing close to 50,000 people would be legalized by the end of the first quarter, a major step.

Each unofficial complex faces a triple task. First, determine the rightful owners of the land and how much current residents owe them. Second, gain government approval for a retrofitted urban development plan. And, third, since most of these communities were built on environmentally protected land, they need approval from IBAMA, the Brazilian environmental protection agency, a process that has proved especially thorny.

Last week UNICA-DF filed in court on behalf of thousands of residents for the expropriation of their land from the original owners. That includes the Colorado II, good news for the Moraes, who say they will live with a nagging sense of uncertainty until they get the legitimate deed to their house, land and mango trees.

In the meantime, they are thankful that their family is not crammed into an overpriced apartment in the city.

“Here, I wake up with crickets,” Moraes said. “With birds chirping.” And maybe, someday, to the beautiful sound of government sanitation workers picking up the trash.