Popular Housing

The social housing policy in Brazil has fails, especially with regard to adaptation of the programs and projects of housing to the cultural issues and the identity of the relocated communities. The adjustment of people to a new condition of life, livelihood and neighborhood generates various discontentment, producing negative effects, including the very structure of the buildings, for example, to perform inadequate changes in the project of houses, and misuse of buildings. Therefore, this paper aims to check the level of habitability of a popular low-income housing estate situated in the neighborhood of Cordeiro in the city of Recife-PE, from a practical experience of Post Occupancy Evaluation. By conducting research of design memory, interviews with residents and visits to the facilities, it became possible to evaluate how these popular houses have been designed and constructed nowadays. In addition, to relate morphological, existential and spatial aspects with issues related to pathological manifestations that occurred in buildings. Based on the results, it was verified that the facilities have not habitable conditions, and it was found that the origin of pathologies found comes not only from poor construction quality, but also from lack of maintenance and misuse of buildings by users, which is related to the high degree of dissatisfaction of these users with the housing model that was proposed to them.