State-Produced Risk: Social Housing and Disaster Vulnerability

Abstract

The intensification of extreme weather events in Brazil poses growing challenges to housing policy (HP), revealing structural contradictions in the State's actions. This study questions the role of public authorities in producing and perpetuating the exposure of Social Housing (SH) developments and territories to disasters. Despite the relevance of the topic, the analysis of Brazilian HP still lacks comprehensive investigations into the relationship between the location of these projects and socio-environmental vulnerability, remaining restricted to specific case studies. Thus, this article investigates, at the local, regional, and national levels, the relationship between state production of SH and exposure to disasters, with an emphasis on floods. By combining a literature review and a systematic survey of news reports, twenty-seven cases of SH associated with disasters were identified. The findings indicate that HP does not eliminate risks, but redistributes them, transferring the social and environmental costs of housing to the population. By highlighting the state-produced risk and the perpetuation of socio-spatial injustice, the study reveals the contradictions, conflicting conceptions, and divergent interests that shape public policies and the ways the city is produced. It demonstrates that, rather than correcting historical inequalities, housing policy reproduces them, consolidating exclusionary urban models.