Programa auxílio-moradia no processo de segregação socioespacial da população negra em áreas de risco: uma análise a partir da Vila Olavo Costa em Juiz de Fora - Minas Gerais

Abstract

This study analyzes the socio-spatial segregation of the Black population in high-risk areas of the municipality of Juiz de Fora, focusing on the role of the Housing Assistance Program within this context, with particular attention to the neighborhood Vila Olavo Costa. To achieve this objective, a historical overview of Brazilian colonization was conducted, emphasizing how the concept of race became a central element in social organization and in the hierarchical structuring of economic, political, and cultural relations. This ideological construct, developed during the slavery period, legitimized the exploitation of Black labor and naturalized their marginalization. Even after abolition, this population faced significant barriers to entering the labor market and accessing private land ownership. This historical trajectory persists today, reinforced by socio-spatial segregation, wherein Black and low-income communities are systematically displaced by the government from central urban areas, often resorting to occupation of peripheral zones prone to environmental disasters, such as Vila Olavo Costa. Since its genesis, this territory has been marked by socioeconomic vulnerability and the precariousness of its residents’ housing conditions, compounded by public administration negligence, thus constituting an emblematic space of the environmental racism and urban segregation dynamics present in the municipality. Accordingly, this study examines how the Housing Assistance Program operates within the dynamics of socio-spatial segregation and whether it can enable beneficiaries — originally residents of high-risk areas in Vila Olavo Costa — to access housing located in safer territories with better urban infrastructure.