THE SENSES OF THE SOCIAL FUNCTION OF PROPERTY IN THE STRUGGLE FOR HOUSING IN CURITIBA

Abstract

The “right to housing” is provided for the Constitutional Charter as a social right of the Brazilian people. However, as the law does not create reality, understanding the relations of the space production is fundamental for the analysis of the conditions for realizing rights. In the absence or limitation of housing policies and the impossibility of access to housing by the market, social movements of “struggle for housing” promote occupations of buildings and land in order to guarantee the right to housing, while also problematizing private property. The Social Function of Urban Property, in this context, emerges as a legal-political category in dispute in the field of contradictions between the guarantee of property and the Right to the City. The objective of the work was to understand how the social function is signified in the discourses and practices of these collective subjects. The National Movement for Struggle for Housing (MNLM) and the Union for Popular Housing of Paraná (UMP-PR) in Curitiba, Brazil were analysed. It was observed that social movements unfold the “struggle for housing” in different collective actions and heterogeneous discourses in the dispute for housing provision and for the right to the city, with social function being one of the categories that emerges notably in the mediations between the State and the legal field.