Social Housing in São Paulo: Challenges and New Management Tools

In June 2009, the Cities Alliance published the English-language version of Social Housing in São Paulo: Challenges and New Management Tools. This publication highlights the Cities Alliance’s on-going technical cooperation with the São Paulo Municipal Housing Secretariat (SEHAB) on urban projects.  

Social Housing is based largely on the development of HABISP – a central database containing detailed information about São Paulo’s precarious settlements, informal land subdivisions and slum tenements.

A central feature of HABISP is its ability to provide monitoring indicators and ranking of neighbourhoods based on a set of pre-defined priority criteria. HABISP will be used by the municipality of São Paulo to facilitate strategic, systematic planning for social housing in the city. With the aid of up-to-date data on the city’s settlements, the municipality of São Paulo can design policies and target limited resources in order to maximise benefits.

The publication recommends that HABISP data be available to not only members of the SEHAB team, but to other departments and secretariats of the government as well.