The rapid growth of Brazilian cities without adequate oversight by public authorities has resulted in a series of problems stemming from a lack of decent housing. Since the 1980s, grassroots community associations and academics have joined forces to pressure the government into developing housing policies that would not only construct new homes and neighborhoods, but also secure other fundamental rights, such as healthcare and education. Today, forty years after this initial push, we observe a lack of public housing policies across all three levels of government targeting the most vulnerable populations, even as we see a growing popularization of Technical Assistance for Social Interest Housing, known as ATHIS.
In the 1980s and 1990s, academics and technical professionals from various fields joined organized social movements to bolster the struggle for public housing policies. Organized into entities known as technical advisory groups (assessorias técnicas), these professionals in architecture, law, engineering, geography, history, and social sciences supported grassroots struggles. They did so both by developing housing projects and by participating in the co-creation of public policies with the state.
