Page 10 - UmRio Sustainability - Action Plan

PROJECT BACKGROUND

These areas were land that no one claimed ownership of. Today, it is estimated that

less than 1% of favela residents in the city of Rio de Janeiro have title to the land on
which they live, despite a federal law from 2017 Regularização Fundiária Urbana (Urban
Land Regularization) that was meant to facilitate the legalization of properties in low-
income areas (Schmidt, 2022). This lack of formal title to the properties in which
favelados live creates not only a precarious situation for residents but also doesn’t
incentivize residents to build homes with quality materials and formal hookups or
structures, given the fact that they could be, and in many cases have been, evicted at
any moment due to lack of formal ownership (Mier, 2014). This lack of quality building
materials and planning also increases residents' vulnerability to climate change (2014).

Brazil’s 2020 census was postponed to 2022-2023, and the data has not yet been fully
released. As such, the most recent census data on favelas comes from the 2010 census.
At that time, around 11.4 million people (6% of the population) lived in favelas, and
IBGE mapped 6,329 favelas across Brazil, located in 323 of Brazil’s 5,565 municipalities
(IBGE | Censo 2010, n.d.)

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