As organizations, collectives and groups mobilized for the right to housing and the right to the city, based in different cities in Brazil and around the world, we express our solidarity with the squats [in brazilian portuguese : ocupações] located in downtown Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and our concern about the threats of eviction faced by the collectives and people who live there.
In recent years, civil society and organized social movements have played an exemplary role in the city of Belo Horizonte, the third largest urban area in Brazil, in favor of the right to housing. Through mutual aid and collective occupation of vacant land and buildings that did not fulfill any social function, through self-construction or self-rehabilitation, facilitated by a wide network of support, these movements have created more housing for the poorest populations in this city over the past 15 years than the Brazilian government’s policies aimed at promoting popular housing. Through the ocupações movements, thousands of families have attained the right to housing through appropriation of empty buildings as well as self-construction on squatted derelict sites. These movements have also built, through this same dynamic, collective spaces, social and cultural centers, open to all citizens, cooperatives, and have contributed in some cases to preventing the demolition of buildings of great historical and architectural value. These actions are part of the continuity of other mobilizations that, throughout the history of this city, have contributed to the maintenance of working-class neighborhoods and traditional communities in several areas surrounding the central region, despite strong pressure from the elites and the real estate market against them.
The experience of Belo Horizonte shows us that the so-called “housing crisis”, which currently affects major cities around the world, and the effects of real estate speculation on the lack of affordable housing, are not inevitable phenomena. It also shows us the importance of collective organization and solidarity in reclaiming the city as a common good, while, from one continent to another, urban centers increasingly seem to have become a vast business ground for the real estate market. The case of Belo Horizonte refers to other pioneering experiences in favor of the right to the city, which have emerged in different Brazilian cities in recent decades, and which are known worldwide.
However, this social dynamic in Belo Horizonte is currently under serious threat by the intensification of real estate speculation, especially in the central region. A bill currently under scrutiny at the municipal level (the PL 574/2025, already dubbed by many as the “Law of Speculation”) plans to facilitate verticalization and urban densification for the benefit of developers, thus accelerating the dynamics of speculation and aggravating the risk of eviction for the poorest families living in neighborhoods close to the center.
One of the oldest squats in the city center, Kasa Invisível, which has been resisting for 13 years in the heart of Belo Horizonte, is currently facing an imminent threat of eviction following a court decision that places a speculative project above the social function of property (in theory, constitutionally guaranteed in Brazil). Born in 2013 following the occupation by an anti-capitalist collective of buildings that had been vacant and without social function for many years, Kasa Invisível has since functioned as a place of residence for precarious families, but also as a self-managed social and cultural center. The Kasa also serves as a permanent place of support for other squats and for the homeless population, which is very numerous in the city center.
Beyond the Kasa, the squat Ocupação Maria do Arraial, which since 2023 has been hosting nearly 50 precarious families in a building occupied by the Movement of Struggles in Neighborhoods and Favelas (Movimento de Luta nos Bairros Vilas e Favelas – MLB), has also received a court order for eviction, scheduled for the next few weeks. These court orders announce risks that weigh on other occupations: the squats Vida Nova, São Paulo and Casa Rosa, linked to the Popular Liberation Movement (MLP), as well as many others. Beyond the risk to the homes and daily lives of hundreds of families, it is also overall spaces for mutual aid and popular organization, which play an essential role in the city, that are threatened.
These occupations, in addition to being inhabited places, also allow for the deployment of a series of popular activities and projects: cooperatives for the production of food or book publishing, hairdressing salons, libraries and community cinemas, free spaces, festivities, places of debate and political organization, cultural activities, etc.
We therefore publicly express our support to the urban squats of the center of Belo Horizonte and neighboring regions, in the face of the ongoing threats of eviction. We also express our concern about the so-called “Speculation Bill”, which would set a worrying precedent for this city and for several other Brazilian cities, cities crossed by deep injustices and inequalities, but also by exemplary social mobilizations in the field of the right to housing and the right to the city.
We reaffirm the importance of the unconditional right to housing for all people living in urban squats (ocupações) in this city, and the duty of the proper authorities (on different levels: District Attorney’s office, Mayor and State Government’s offices), to act in order to ensure this basic right is respected. We invite all groups and collectives mobilized in the cause of the right to housing to take a stand in order to protect these occupations and – through them – the social function of these buildings. We also invite all groups committed to the right to housing, wherever they are, to express their solidarity with Kasa Invisível, Maria do Arraial and the other ocupações of Belo Horizonte.
This letter is signed by 40 organizations from 11 countries and various regions of Brazil, including national and international coalitions:
ALDA (Euskadi – País Basco) – APPUII (França) – Arquitetas Sem Fronteiras – ASF (Brasil) – Campanha Despejo Zero (Brasil) – Casa de Referência da Mulher Tina Martins (Belo Horizonte – Brasil) –CAUSEOS – Colectivo de investigación crítica en Territorios Rurale (Chile) –Central de Movimentos Populares (Brasil) – Civic Square (Birmingham – Reino Unido) – Droit Au Logement – DAL (França) – Habita (Portugal) – Habitat International Coalition Global network (HIC) – House of Annetta (Londres – Reino Unido) –Instituto Esperança Maria (Belo Horizonte – Brasil) – Kasa Invisível (Belo Horizonte – Brasil) – Labjuta (UFABC – São Paulo / Brasil) – Marabunta Corriente política y social (Argentina) – Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto – MTST (Brasil) –Movimento de Moradia da Região Central (São Paulo – Brasil) – Movimento de Luta nos Bairros, Vilas e Favelas – MLB (Brasil)– Movimento Luta Popular (Brasil) Movimento de Mulheres Olga Benário (Brasil) – Movimento Luta de Classes – MLC (Brazil) Movimento Correnteza (Brasil) – Movimento O Biribiri é nosso! (Diamantina – Brasil) – Morar de Outras Maneiras – MOM (UFMG – Belo Horizonte / Brazil) – Nodo Solidale (Itália – Mexico) – Our Yard (Reino Unido) – Quarticciolo Ribelle (Roma – Italia) – Plataforma de Afectadas por la Hipoteca – PAH (Espanha) – PLAT – Piattaforma di Intervento Sociale (Bologna – Italia) – Ponto Cultural Maria de Lôra (Diamantina – Brasil)- Sindicat de LLogateres de Catalunya (Barcelona – Catalunha / Espanha)- SPAC! (Itália) – Syndicat du logement Marseille (Marseille – França) – Teia dos povos (Brasil) – Tenants Union of Ukraine (Ucrânia) – Thessaloniki Tenants Union (Thessaloniki – Grécia) – União dos Movimentos de Moradia de São Paulo (São Paulo – Brasil)- Un Centre Ville Pour Tous (Marseille – França) –União da Juventude Rebelião – UJR (Brasil)- Unidade Popular pelo Socialismo – UP (Brasil).
