Spatially and Socially Progressive State Policy and Programs: The Case of Brazil's National Housing Bank

Abstract

A variety of conceptions of the state, from pluralist to Marxist, can be used to interpret the social and spatial dimensions of state activity and the limits of state relative autonomy. Three of these state theories are compared and assessed in this paper in the context of an empirical analysis of the performance of Brazil's massive National Housing Bank (BNH), which set ambitious goals of spatially and socially progressive resource redistribution. A comparison of BNH's investments in two cities (Curitiba and Salvador) reveals that the latter, which is relatively poor, has received more loan money, but a smaller share of it has gone to low-income households. BNH has been able to transfer substantial resources to the urban periphery, thus fulfilling its spatial objective and demonstrating how the state can spatially disperse resources, but has had far less success with its social objective of providing housing loans to the periphery's poor. This is largely attributable to its institutional form coupled with the urban periphery's economic problems and inequality. This failure documents the limits of BNH's autonomy from the private market and housing system. Perhaps the principal beneficiaries of BNH have been the state and its agents, suggesting self-serving relative autonomy.

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