Minha Casa Minha Vida: Chamber approves program recreation – 06/07/2023 – Politics

The Chamber of Deputies approved this Wednesday morning (7) the MP (Provisional Measure) that recreates the Minha Casa Minha Vida program.

The project was approved in a symbolic vote (without the counting of votes) and united parties from the base of the Lula government (PT) and even from the opposition, in the case of the PL, of former president Jair Bolsonaro. Only the Novo oriented against the matter, and the Opposition released its bench.

The text is now going to the Senate, where it needs to be approved by June 14th in order not to lose its validity. The House will have only one week to discuss the matter and any change will require the project to return to the Chamber.

The vote took place with the plenary emptied. Because of this week’s holiday, the President of the House, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), dismissed the parliamentarians from registering their presence in the federal capital. In this way, deputies did not need to register a physical presence in the Chamber to vote by cell phone in the session.

The text was unanimously approved by the mixed committee (made up of deputies and senators) that analyzed the issue in the National Congress on the 1st.

Between Tuesday (6) and Wednesday (7), minor adjustments were made to the report by the rapporteur, Deputy Fernando Marangoni (União-SP). He participated in a meeting with Lira and party leaders at the official residence of the President of the Chamber on Tuesday afternoon.

Marangoni’s report changed many points of the project sent by the Executive and included a series of novelties in the text after negotiation with the federal government and several public hearings in all regions of the country. The substitute with 49 pages, while the one sent by the government had 16.

Among the novelties approved by the Chamber are the readjustment in the value of the works after their beginning following inflation. Before, the amount was not corrected, which in the parliamentary view led builders to abandon undertakings.

Another innovation is encouraging the production of units closer to urban centers with urban infrastructure in the surroundings.

In addition, projects will need to have measures that increase environmental sustainability. The objective in this case is both an ecological and financial benefit for the owner, who can pay less on the water or electricity bill.

The text approved this Wednesday also included the need for 5% of Minha Casa Minha Vida resources to be allocated to idle works, retrofits and developments in cities with less than 50,000 inhabitants to the states and municipalities.

The MP took a while to start being analyzed by Congress due to the disputes between the Chamber and the Senate involving the rite of processing the MPs, which delayed the analysis of the projects sent by the federal government.

The MPs processing rite was changed during the pandemic, without the mixed commission and with the MP going straight to the plenary first of the Chamber and then of the Senate. With that, the Chamber gained power as it had the final word on the project.

Lira first tried to maintain the rite even with the end of the pandemic. Afterwards, he proposed that the joint committees be maintained, but that they have more deputies than senators.

He was unsuccessful in the face of resistance from the President of the Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD-MG), who managed to maintain the previous rite provided for in the Constitution.

The impasse meant that the mixed commission analyzing the MP was installed only on April 11. The text was received on February 15 in Congress. The commission approved the substitute proposed by the rapporteur, deputy Fernando Marangoni (União-SP), on June 1st.

See the main points:

• Developments will be primarily close to the center and with urban infrastructure

• Project brought the possibility of retrofitting idle properties in city centers

• Green incentives for projects to be more sustainable

• Women victims of violence will be prioritized

• Active facades in projects

• Possibility of regularizing and renovating properties already owned by people

• Extended technical assistance for entities that carry out works