Belo Horizonte, the capital of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais provides a unique example of Brazilian housing inequality. While it was the first planned city in modern Brazil (Caixeta 2017, Lourenço 2017), plans did not include housing for working-class people within the city limits (Caixeta 2017, Lourenço 2017). Over the decades, as the city grew larger than it was initially planned for, people found ways to settle in the city's outskirts, often occupying land they did not own (Caixeta 2017, Lourenço 2017). This practice of occupying unused land is still a reality in Belo Horizonte, and in more recent decades, facing rising prices and a severe housing shortage, people have also begun to occupy abandoned buildings. People can start an occupation process by themselves, but often they have the support of social movements. Regardless of how they find housing, working-class people have to deal with the lack of infrastructure and fight to acquire access to water, electricity, and sewage systems. This project is based on six weeks of qualitative research in the Summer of 2022, funded by the National Science Foundation. I use interviews with ten individuals involved in land occupations to show that while the occupations took place differently, many of them have had similar experiences regarding their fight to gain access to proper infrastructure.
