02.4 OUR ROLE
The team aimed to advance self-managed housing by (1) promoting UNMP’s legal framework for a Self-Management Law and (2) supporting housing projects in addressing environmental protection issues. In service of these aims, the team produced two main deliverables:
1. Legislative Support and Advocacy for a Self-Management Law. In order to support the movement’s efforts to establish a national framework for autogestão, we have created a series of promotional and educational materials, primarily hosted on the Lei da Autogestão Já (Self-Management Law Now) website. This website acts as a toolbox for legislative advocacy and community engagement, hosting a variety of products to disseminate to a wide range of audiences including educational materials, a promotional documentary, an interactive mapping platform, detailed case studies from across Latin America, and a memorandum on collective property ownership to inform the Self-Management Law. Each of these components will be discussed in detail in Chapter 5 of this report.
2. APP Resource Suite. This suite of resources is a flexible guide for any self-managed housing project to address environmental protection requirements. Based on its work with a pilot site, the team developed resources on environmental protection laws and designing for APPs that are educational and approachable, but also adaptable and transferable based on a housing project’s needs. This deliverable aims to lessen the burden placed on the movements to adhere to strict and often financially punitive environmental standards by laying the theoretical groundwork for how similar projects might be designed in the future.
In addition to these deliverables, as part of the research process, the team produced significant amounts of background research on relevant topics ranging from urban land policy and housing policy to the history of social movements and planning in São Paulo (see Chapter 3); visited a dozen housing projects and three technical advisory firms; and conducted 23 semi-structured key informant interviews, seven group interviews, and four interviews with external experts. This report is a compilation of the highlights of our work, ranging from research that we began in January 2020 to our fieldwork experiences in March to the completion of our deliverables in May 2020.
INTRODUCTION • 23
