ABSTRACT
This paper proposes a conceptual debate on housing by considering it in its various contemporary mea nings: need; demand; commodity; collective social right; deficit; and public policy. Housing, which has long been consolidated as an object of transdisciplinary research, has undergone several levels of analysis to be reworked in the current Brazilian political and economic context. Next, housing appears as an object of struggle and of collective social rights in the wake of the discourse on human rights. In the pragmatic horizon of management combined with technical knowledge, housing is disseminated as a deficit. Finally, the last part of the article is dedicated to housing as public policy centered on state action that characte rizes contemporary housing policies that no longer fit under the label of popular housing, culminating in Housing of Social Interest in Brazil (HSI). By way of conclusion, HSI finally becomes the contradictory synthesis of the housing concepts listed and the last level of analysis in the proposed conceptual debate.
Keywords:
housing of social interest; public policies; Minha Casa, Minha Vida Program (My Home, My Life Program)