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Architectures of Hope examines how communal idealism, electoral politics, and low-income consumer markets made first-time homeownership a reality for millions of low-income Brazilians over the last ten years.

Drawing on a five-year-long ethnography among city planners, architects, street-level bureaucrats, politicians, market and bank representatives, community leaders, and past, present, and future beneficiaries, Moisés Kopper tells the story of how a group of grassroots housing activists rose from oblivion to build a model community. He explores the strategies set forth by housing activists as they waited and hoped for—and eventually secured—homeownership through Minha Casa Minha Vida’s public-private infrastructure. By showing how these efforts coalesced in Porto Alegre—Brazil’s once progressive hotspot—he interrogates the value systems and novel arrangements of power and market that underlie the country’s post-neoliberal project of modern and inclusive development.

By chronicling the making and remaking of material hope in the aftermath of Minha Casa Minha Vida, Architectures of Hope reopens the future as a powerful venue for ethnographic inquiry and urban development.

"...the most original--and profoundly disturbing--work on the critical issue of housing affordability...." --Chester Hartman, President, Poverty and Race Research Action Council In Shelter Poverty, Michael E. Stone presents the definitive discussion of housing and social justice in the United States. Challenging the conventional definition of housing affordability, Stone offers original and powerful insights about the nature, causes, and consequences of the affordability problem and presents creative and detailed proposals for solving a problem that afflicts one-third of this nation. Setting the housing crisis into broad political, economic, and historical contexts, Stone asks: What is shelter poverty? Why does it exist and persist? and How can it be overcome? Describing shelter poverty as the denial of a universal human need, Stone offers a quantitative scale by which to measure it and reflects on the social and economic implications of housing affordability in this country. He argues for "the right to housing" and presents a program for transforming a large proportion of the housing in this country from an expensive commodity into an affordable social entitlement. Employing new concepts of housing ownership, tenure, and finance, he favors social ownership in which market concepts have a useful but subordinate role in the identification of housing preferences and allocation. Stone concludes that political action around shelter poverty will further the goal of achieving a truly just and democratic society that is also equitably and responsibly productive and prosperous.

Using cross-national political, economic, and environmental comparisons as well as case studies from all parts of the world, this volume focuses on the increasing problem of providing shelter in underdeveloped countries, the innovative solutions that have been applied to the problem, and the prospects for the future. Spontaneous Shelter examines the contemporary and emerging issues that face homeless people in the Third World and suggests policy actions that can be taken. Providing middle-class as well as poverty-level examples, and considering environmental issues, the contributors use case materials, photographs, and drawings to clarify the policy agenda for basic shelter provision.