Alugar, ocupar, alugar: rentismo de baixo e organização popular na produção da cidade

Abstract

This work aims to understand the urban occupations organized by groups of homeless people supported by social movements in Belo Horizonte in the recent decades (late 2000s to mid 2020s) considering the position of these spaces in relation to informal housing markets, especially rental housing. I begin my argument with an overview of the housing options provided by the State, Capital, and organized popular classes from the late 1980s to the present day in the context of Belo Horizonte. Later on, I present housing trajectories based on empirical data and interviews (in particular with women involved in the struggle for housing) and I identify patterns of practices of production and consumption of self-built popular housing. Then, I position the occupants subjects within this framework. Through the identification of practices of a kind of rentierism (from below) present in peripheral territories, including the occupations in question, I seek to reinterpret the meanings of self construction, periphery, housing deficit, and the role of the State and the local social movements in the production of popular housing alternatives. Finally, I affirm the need to consider, in urban studies, housing self-built by the popular classes as part of the popular economy. With this, I point out the challenges of integrating the productive (and rentier) dimension of housing to the right to housing, beyond its character of consumption good.