Brazilian National Housing Policy

Abstract

Regarding the National Housing Policy in Brazil, this paper aims to identify how institutional capacities vary into municipalities, and if this variation is related to housing deficit rates. Specific literature explains that the supply of housing services depends on the existence of agencies and resources to plan and execute public policies. This paper tests the hypothesis that there is a negative correlation between the level of institutional development and housing deficit – so that higher institutional development implies lower rates of housing deficit. An institutional development index (IDI) was created, based on the existence (or not) of Municipal Housing Fund and Municipal Housing Council. The research design combined the methods of principal component analysis, ANOVA and a regression model of ordinary least squares (OLS). Using descriptive and multivariate analysis, the main finding was that higher institutional development is associated with lower housing deficit rates in most of Brazilian municipalities.