Women make up 60% of the country's housing deficit.

By Vinicius Konchinski, from Brasil de Fato - For three years, Silvia Liger Silva Cruz, 44, has lived with her two sons – Lucas, 23, and Fabrício, 15 – in the Carolina Maria de Jesus occupation, in the East Zone of São Paulo.

She is a hairdresser and manicurist. During the pandemic, she lost clients. She couldn't pay the rent for her apartment in Cidade Tiradentes, also in the East Zone. She was left with no choice but to build a 6-square-meter shack on an occupied plot of land.

She moved there in 2019. Since then, that shack has grown. But so far it doesn't even have a bathroom or a kitchen.

“We shower in the communal bathroom. We do what we have to do in a bucket and then flush it down the toilet,” he explained. “My shack is made of wood and tarpaulin. A lot of water still gets in.”

Silvia is one of the 3,4 million women in the country who are responsible for homes considered inadequate for habitation. These women's dwellings account for 60% of Brazil's housing deficit, which in 2019 was almost 5,9 million homes – meaning women are the most affected by the problem.

The so-called housing deficit is made up of families or individuals who live, basically, in three situations: in extremely precarious or improvised housing, as is the case with Silvia; who share the same residence with another family; or who pay such high rent that they have to decide whether to buy food or cover the monthly expense.

In all these cases, women are the majority, according to the most up-to-date data on the subject, presented by the federal government in 2021. These calculations were made by the João Pinheiro Foundation (FJP), based on figures from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).

According to Raquel Ludermir, PhD in Urban Development and national coordinator of political advocacy at the NGO Habitat for Humanity Brazil, the reasons for this female majority in the deficit are many. They range from greater difficulty in accessing education to the patriarchal way in which Brazilian society is structured.

Ludermir, however, explains that almost all of these issues boil down to two problems that directly affect women who do not have adequate housing: the "feminization of poverty" and domestic violence.

“Women are more frequently and more markedly in situations of poverty, and this is reflected in the housing issue,” she stated. “And on top of that, there is the issue of domestic violence. We hear of cases of women having to leave home to protect themselves, to survive.”

Graça Xavier, from the National Union for Popular Housing (UNMP) and the Union of Housing Movements of São Paulo (UMM-SP), confirms the diagnosis.

She personally only managed to finish high school after getting married and having children. In the 1980s and 1990s, she couldn't afford rent to live with her family. She lived in borrowed shelters. She only settled down permanently in 1992, after building a house in Jardim Celeste, in the southern part of São Paulo, through community efforts.

“Most of them get married or have children very young. They don’t have time to study. They can’t get a good job,” she said, adding that she still helps register female heads of household who need housing.

“There is a demographic component to this problem. There are many families headed by women, especially those with low incomes. We have many single mothers, divorced women, women abandoned by their husbands,” added Camila D'Ottaviano, a researcher at the Observatory of the Metropolises and professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo (FAU-USP), regarding the female deficit.

Growing problem

This deficit, incidentally, has been known to activists and scholars for years. However, it was only in 2021 that it was verified by official statistics.

It was this year that FJP included in its surveys the gender breakdown of leadership in families without adequate housing. That research was based on IBGE data collected between 2016 and 2019.

Raquel, from Habitat for Humanity Brazil, says that what has been surprising in these four years is that the housing deficit among women has grown, even with public policies that prioritize them. In 2016, 54,6% of families comprising the deficit were headed by women – 5,4 percentage points less than in 2019.

Law 11.124 of 2005, enacted by then-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), stipulates that social housing should preferably be registered in the names of women in order to protect them.

“It’s common for ex-husbands to sell the houses, use the money, and leave the woman with nothing,” Ludermir explained. “The law prevents this.”

Complex solution

Raquel stated that the data on the housing deficit among women shows how difficult it is to solve this problem. According to her, simply building houses does not solve the issue. This is because many women who make up the deficit already had homes, but some abandoned them due to threats and aggression from their partners or close acquaintances.

“The ‘Minha Casa Minha Vida’ program alone is not enough,” she said, citing the federal program for building affordable housing that was relaunched last month. “If a woman – even if she is a beneficiary of a housing program – is facing a situation of extreme violence, she will leave the house, she will lose it, and she will never return.”

She points out that combating domestic violence is essential. It is also necessary to ensure that women who are victims of this problem are sheltered in appropriate safe houses so that they do not end up adding to the existing problem.

Raquel also points out that the deficit recorded in research does not account for the true extent of the problem, being underestimated. In the specific case of women, many victims of violence live with their abusers because they have nowhere else to go.

"The official data shows a lot, but it doesn't encompass the full complexity of the problem," the expert concluded.