Uma ficção política-empresarial: a COHAB/RN e a edificação de conjuntos habitacionais (1977-1979)

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the performance of the Popular Housing Company of Rio Grande do Norte (COHAB / RN) in the construction of housing estates through its organizational structure in the late 1970s. COHAB / RN was constituted by the state of Rio Grande do North within the political and bureaucratic logic established by the National Housing Bank (BNH) during the period of the Brazilian Military Dictatorship to act within the scope of housing policies. For the realization of this institutional history, we used for the first time internal documentation of the institution, the Minutes of the Board of Directors of COHAB / RN from 1977-1979. This source had its content crossed with other documents, such as the newspapers O Poti and Diário de Natal; laws, decrees and regulations issued by the National Housing Bank (BNH). In the first chapter, we discuss the development of BNH's public policies. The second chapter turned to the study of the history of the early years of COHAB / RN and in the third chapter the historicization of the construction/edification of the Pirangi Project was done through the relationship between the potiguar company and BNH. Throughout the dissertation, we realized that the federal bank managed to establish a technostructure capable of how the housing was built in Brazil between 1964 until 1985. In Rio Grande do Norte, COHAB / RN, which belonged to the state government and in theory would be administratively and financially independent, in fact it acted as if it were a branch of BNH. Thus, we understand that the state housing company participated in a centralized administrative structure at BNH instead of the state government and that this administration, despite being regulated by the internal regulation of the federal bank itself, is legally contestable. The Pirangi project carried out by COHAB / RN was a “pioneer” building due to the size of the financing, the volume of housing and the social facilities provided since the project. However, its construction was more guided by a political and electoral perspective than by seeking to reduce the state housing deficit. Thus, the inhabitants of the complex had to survive far from an adequate infrastructure (lack of water, transportation, school, commerce and an adequate health post) and the discourse of guaranteeing social equipment from the beginning was not consolidated in the reality of those people's lives. In addition, the conflict between practicing a public policy aimed at the poorest and having to maintain profitability resulted in several contradictions in which this public policy failed to reach the neediest right and the search for profitability was not carried out due to the mandatory nature of these companies trying to reach that layer of society.