LabCidade FAUUSP and the Housing Department of the São Paulo City Hall are organising an International Seminar to discuss Social Housing Rental Policies, to be held from November 5th to 8th 2024 in a virtual mode.

The seminar aims to build a critical overview of these policies to update the debate and recognise experiences that inspire a social rent policy for São Paulo as well as allow further research into the preponderant and growing role of rent as a new frontier for the accumulation of financial capital. Thus, it aims to advance the reflection and agenda for the construction of policies that move in the direction of de-mercantilising housing, democratising it with community involvement and public support.

It is part of the research project “Housing as a service: inputs for the formulation, management and implementation of a social rent housing policy in São Paulo”, which is part of the FAPESP Public Policy Research Programme 2023 (Process No. 2023/10276-5). And it is a continuation of the International Seminar “Rental Housing in Latin America: State, finance and popular markets”, held in 2020, now with rental housing policies as the guiding axis.

Below are some suggestions for topics we want to discuss, always with rental housing policy – including social housing services, social rent, rent assistance, social rent, rent regulation, among others – as the axis of analysis in relation to:

  • Concepts and theories around rent and urban policies and rental housing policies;
  • Models of partnerships with the market, organised civil society, social movements, cooperatives, non-profit associations;
  • Legal models, different forms of ownership and regulation;
  • Governance models, institutional and budgetary arrangements, and actors involved in rental housing policy that consider the following axes:
  • Social rental housing policies for specific groups;
  • Social rental housing policies for regulating prices, temporary rental markets, structuring guarantees, among others;
  • Forms of production (renovation, construction and acquisition);
  • Forms of managing social rent housing;
  • Forms of access and permanence by the public that demands it;
  • Resistance, social movements and activism around rent and housing policies;
  • Interfaces between social rent policy and other policies;
  • Interfaces of social rent policy with the urban space and its policies, including urban regulation;
  • Interfaces of social rent policy with markets and finance: securitisation and other models of financialisation;
  • Interfaces between social rent policy and popular markets.

For those interested in taking part, please send an expanded abstract of 500 words about your work by 1 September 2024 (new deadline). An international committee will evaluate the work and those selected will be invited to give an oral presentation at a seminar in virtual.

Abstracts can be submitted in English, Portuguese or Spanish and must be sent using this form.

For any questions or clarifications, please write an e-mail with “SEMINAR ON SOCIAL RENT HOUSING POLICIES” as subject of the message to labcidade@usp.br.

IMPORTANT DATES

Deadline for expanded abstracts: September 1th 2024.

Announcement of selected proposals: September 20th 2024.

Seminar date: 05th to 08th of November 2024.