Moradia Precária e Violência na Cidade de São Paulo

This paper discusses the relationship between poverty and urban violence, taking thecity of São Paulo as example. It seeks to show that the local of residence, and notincome, is the most adequate variable to evaluate the association between poverty andviolence in the city. The spatial cut allows us to observe the inter-relations between economic, social and rights dimensions which are fundamental to understand theviolence dynamics, but could not be perceived by looking at income only. The paper investigates the links between, from one side, the results of sociological and anthropological studies on violence within poor communities and, from the other side, the quantitative data on poverty within these communities in São Paulo for 2000. The data show strong correlation between localities of precarious housing and homiciderates. The statistics on housing conditions, education and employment inform that communities like favelas and similar localities suffer economic and social disadvantagesso or more grave than the poor population in general.