The Brazilian government announced Thursday it would build 650,000 new houses this year within the social housing program 'Mi Casa, Mi Vida' (My House, My Life), which aimed at providing homes for poorer families, Xinhua reported.
At a speech in Brasilia, the minister of cities, Alexandre Baldy, and the secretary-general of the presidency, Moreira Franco, presented the program and said they are now awaiting proposals from municipalities to receive investments.
130,000 houses will be built for families with monthly income of up to 1,800 reais (550 U.S. dollars), 70,000 for families with income of up to 2,600 reais (795 U.S. dollars), 400,000 units for those earning up to 4,000 reais (1,225 U.S. dollars) and 50,000 for families earning up to 9,000 reais (2,738 U.S. dollars).
According to Franco, this construction will be made possible thanks to 63 billion reais (19.62 billion U.S. dollars) from a state fund for public workers and 9.7 billion reais (2.965 billion U.S. dollars) from the federal budget.
For 2017, the government was planning to build 610,000 new units but Baldy admitted that this fell short, with just 495,000 residences being completed.
Baldy said that, this year, the federal government's contributions will be enough to cover the 130,000 houses for the lowest-income families.
According to him, the government also completed 42,000 houses out of the 73,000 which had remained paralyzed during the economic crisis the country went through in 2015 and 2016.