Different rental housing policies models and the ongoing difficulty of overcoming the housing crisis

Abstract

This paper argues that rental housing is globally growing as a means to access housing in the face of multiple crises and as a financialized real estate frontier of capital accumulation. In Latin America and Brazil, where the homeownership model historically prevailed, households are increasingly renting, the real estate market is incorporating new formats (build-to-rent, multifamily), and professional rental management is spreading in formal and informal markets.

Through a panorama of global and Brazilian cases gathered from a Rental Housing Policies Seminar (2024), we identified different modalities in a wide scope of rental policies worldwide. The paper presents the Brazilian cases analytically organized in three State modulations, understood as incremental processes in which contradictions and variations can coexist: Emergency, Provider and Conceding State.