City Hall and Government estimate that R$ 3 billion in private investment will be needed

R$ 4 bi plan aims to take 20 thousand families to the center of SP by 2019

06/04/2013 | 2h02

Tiago Dantas - O Estado de S. Paulo

After attempting to revitalize downtown São Paulo by installing large cultural facilities and projecting a concession area of 45 blocks to the private initiative through the Nova Luz project, the City Hall and State government now promise the construction of 20 thousand housing units. If the schedule is followed, the Casa Paulista project will be completed in 2019.

To effectively implement the plan, R$ 4.6 billion will be needed, according to the State Housing Secretariat. Private investors will be responsible for the investment of approximately R$ 3 billion, while the City Hall, the State Government and the Union, with the credit program Minha Casa Minha Vida, will finance the rest. The intention of the government is to release the call for construction proposals in June and have the contract signed in October. In two years, the first buildings should be delivered. Four years later, all of them will be ready.

The projects will still be further detailed, but the guidelines have already been chosen by the public sector. The estates shall be separated by income levels, but on the same block, there will be families earning from R$ 755 to R$ 10,848.00, in an open condo model. The ground floors should receive retail and services. Additionally, the project plans for the construction of schools, parking lots, walkways and the enlargement of sidewalks.

In one of the lots, located between Júlio Prestes Station, Cleveland Street and Rudge Avenue, there is even the idea of providing clinical service to crack addicts.

"The Casa Paulista Project is the negation of the two bad housing models we find in the city that are made by government and market: the BNH model, causing pockets of poverty, and the medieval model, surrounded by walls, which exclude urban life”, says Philip Yang, founder of Urbem Institute, responsible for the urban plan of the proposal.

Plots of Land. Philip Yang believes that the project depends on the articulation of two movements: bringing people back downtown and recovering idle industrial areas. By mapping the region, architects of the institute found dozens of unused properties near the rail line grid. The expropriation of these locations may be one of the barriers for the project to succeed. But, to avoid it, properties that are within Special Zones of Social Interest (Zeis) were chosen according to the Strategic Master Plan in force.

One of the sectors of the enterprise follows the line of the Paulista Company of Metropolitan Trains (CPTM), between the Pacaembu and Orlando Murgel Viaducts in the Barra Funda neighborhood. By decreasing the distances of properties from transportation facilities, the idea is to reduce displacements within the city. The Submunicipality of Sé, one of the beneficiaries of the project, concentrates 17% of job offers in the city, but only gathers 3% of residents, according to Mayor Fernando Haddad (PT). "We want our central area to have activities all day. I think we will have a surgical intervention, which can lead to a transformation in the region.”