Social business and affordable housing: a new frontier of financialized capital?

Abstract

This paper explores the entanglement between social business and affordable housing. It analyzes companies that are looking for resources in the financial market to finance housing solutions for low-income families, viewing housing as a business "opportunity". It reviews the literature and brings criticisms against the implementation of this agenda, showing its intertwinement with families’ indebtedness in a “neoliberalism from below”. It describes the strategies of a company that created the first social impact bond in Brazil to offer credit at lower interest rates to poor families so that they can renovate their homes. Finally, the paper concludes that the motivation was entrepreneurial, not the construction of a policy nor the public interest, even though it has urban impacts and impacts on families’ indebtedness, which must still be considered.