Homeless Workers' Movement

The Homeless Workers Movement (Portuguese: Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto. MTST) is a social movement in Brazil. It originated from the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (English: Landless Rural Workers' Movement). Although the MTST can trace its first urban activism efforts to the occupation of Campinas in São Paulo during the 1997 National People’s March, this intervention was organized within the Landless Rural Worker’s Rural Movement (MST) structure. The first proper occupation as a new sociopolitical actor, distinct from the MST, took place in Guarulhos in 2002. It was named “Anita Garibaldi” in honor of Giuseppe Garibaldi’s wife and collaborator, considered to be a radical social reformer during her lifetime.[1]

MTST poster for the Quilombo das Guerreiras Occupation.

Through direct confrontation and negotiation with the government, the MTST struggles to reduce Brazil's housing deficit by staging squatters' occupations in abandoned government buildings in Brazilian cities. Determining an exact number on the housing shortage in Brazil is a difficult task to achieve, but several estimates have been provided. In 2019, The Guardian reported 7.7 million [2] while Habitat for Humanity places the number between 6-8 million.[3] By resisting attempts by local governments to evict the poor and negotiating for their conversion into low-income housing, the MTST has challenged the neoliberal model.[4][5] In fact, at the national level, previous governments have undermined affordable housing projects, including the emblematic Minha Casa, Minha Vida,[6] but have failed at doing so due to MTST interventions.

According to the MTST, there are over 5 million housing units available in abandoned buildings in Brazil. São Paulo, for example, was short of housing units in the 500,000 - 700,000 range as of 2017.[7] As noted before, the MTST originally emerged as a faction within the MST and focuses on urban reform. Although fully autonomous, the organization has a strategic alliance with the MST and also works closely with other Brazilian urban social movements such as the União Nacional de Moradia Popular (English: National Low-income Housing Union) and the Centro dos Movimentos Populares (English: Center of Popular Social Movements).

While the movement is politically heterogeneous, in 2017, MTST’s leader Guilherme Boulos ran as a presidential candidate representing the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL), which signals an ideological cohesion with socialist principles and proposals. On one side, there are branches which resemble a Leninist political party in terms of structure and hierarchy, and on the other side, branches which are clearly committed to goals such as self-management, a characteristic within squatting communities.[8] Squatting is a key practice within MTST and, as such, does not solely have political repercussions, but ecological ones as well. In this regard, the occupation of abandoned buildings and homes, overlaps with decroissance or degrowth.[9] Over time, the MTST has developed a more nuanced and multi-dimensional counter-hegemonic stance on class struggle within the Brazilian government’s embrace of neoliberalism.[10] For example, the MTST’s State Collective of Ceará pivots on the concept of “dignified housing” to advocate for other related issues, such as infrastructure for social wellbeing, education, health care, and transportation.[11]

An occupation by MTST in Carapicuíba, São Paulo.