The official Kassab Sidewalk System
Consultor Jurídico says: In Brazil it is controversial whether you and some of your neighbors can take over public streets and collect “security fees” from other neighbors, even if they object.
For information on the dosage of salt with which you ought to take anything this publication says, see
One of my very first impressions of São Paulo was walking up my girlfriend’s street — now our abode of marital bliss — and noticing how every stretch of sidewalk outside every home was wildly different, where actually present (our house lacks sidewalk).
Every homeowner seems to have the responsibility to provide their own stretch of sidewalk.
The variations are infinite.
Our street (unpaved until the 1970s, then paved with a XIXth century cobblestone surface — like you see in and around Pearl Street in Lower Manhattan, peeking through the modern asphalt like an x-ray of a palimpsest revealing Aristotle’s lost treatise on comedy — in the 1980s, and finally getting a thin coat of tar in the 1990s) is a crazy quilt of individual interpretations of what a sidewalk is and ought to be.
In some parts of the city, sidewalks do seem to follow a standard code here and there, in stretches spanning several properties.
City hall, which implemented the Free Passage program in 2005, was bragging during the election about its imposition of standardized, permeable sidewalks to help with flood control, but as soon as the election was over, it stopped installing them except where a photo op might be arranged.
Passeio Livre FAQ:
Q: Who is responsible for sidewalk maintenance?
A: The property owner. Sidewalks found in a irregular state are subject to fines.
Q: Is there a standard for sidewalk renovation?
A: Yes. Executive Decree nº 45,904/05 establishes a new architectural standard for all sidewalks in the city. It contains rules on accessibility and specifies the materials to be used.
They had a representative of a (the?) company that makes these specific materials on the TV around election time, explaining why they were so groovy — they will put an end to flooding, for one thing! — and everyone was going to love buying them.
I am not able to find any statistics about what percentage of city sidewalks have been so converted between 2005 and now.
Despite having swynked and swyved as a concrete monkey in my youth, I don’t believe I would be able to install the Kassab Sidewalk System according to the building code — assuming there is one. Casual observation of the general lack of coherent zoning patterns does not immediately suggest the presence, or consistent enforcement, of one.
The predominance of the crazy quilt model makes life difficult for skatepunks, as you can imagine, and registers as emblematic of the São Paulo urban experience — where zoning laws seem to be treated as nothing more than suggested best practices, and where the boundaries between public and private property get fuzzy.
C.O.P.S and the One-Man Private-Public Partnership
Neuza does not know I know this, but every month she pays the kid on the motorcycle, who whistles the whole night long, a few shekels for “security,” over my objections. She is afraid of what might happen if she doesn’t — which pisses me off no end. I hate to see my baby be afraid.
If something is wrong with my baby (oo-oo-oo)
Something is wrong, with me-uh
My main objection is the extent to which the scheme — introduced by the kid on the motorcycle who whistles all night long with the presentation of a rumpled, illegible xerox of a xerox of a xerox of an obviously bogus and in any case unintelligible pseudo-official document — resembles the “security” scheme imposed by the flanelinhas, whom you pay to guard your car when you park on a public street.
In downtown Rio in recent days, the police broke up groups of flanelinhas charging as much as R$50 to “secure” a parking spot on public streets.
The implicit covenant here, though nearly always left ambiguous, being “give me money and I will protect your car from being stolen or pillaged (by me).”
ConJur:
A falta de segurança no país torna cada vez mais comum o fechamento de ruas e os chamados condomínios fechados. O Judiciário está abarrotado de ações questionando a cobrança de serviços de segurança e conservação desses locais por associações das quais nem todos os moradores fazem parte.
The lack of public security is making making both closed condominiums and the blocking off of public streets increasingly common. The courts are swamped with lawsuits questioning the levying of fees for security and maintenance services in these area by associations of which not all residents are members.
Na Rio de Janeiro, as associações de moradores costumam alegar que prestam serviços como segurança e conservação do lugar, já que o poder público é omisso. Em São Paulo, sustentam que todos os moradores se beneficiam das melhorias propiciadas pelos serviços, inclusive com a valorização do imóvel. No entanto, os argumentos, que eram encarados como justos pelos tribunais — afinal, se uma pessoa recebe benefícios, em troca, tem de pagar por eles —, começam a sofrer resistência. Moradores que recorrem à Justiça para não serem obrigados a pagar as taxas por serviços que não pediram têm conseguido derrubar as cobranças.
In Rio, resident associations are in the habit of arguing that they provide such services as security and maintenance because the public administration does not do so.
For “resident associations,” in reportedly well over 150 cases at last report (probably an undercount), read “militias” — extortion-protection, vice and black marketeering rackets run by off-duty or retired police and firemen, armed to the teeth with military-grade weaponry.
They also provide (untaxed because black-market) bottled cooking gas, pirate cable TV and gypsy van service. Customer loyalty program: Like I said, the fuckers are armed to the teeth with military-grade weaponry, and have the fix in at City Hall to boot.
I shit you not.
In São Paulo, these associations benefit all residents and can even increase the market value of the property. These arguments, however, once viewed by the courts as valid — after all, if someone is benefited by these services, they should pay for them — are beginning to encounter resistance. Residents who go to court to avoid paying for a service they never contracted have succeeded in overturning such fees.
Just walk up the street here and you will find a number of ddjacent streets blocked off with checkpoints manned by private security — usually, moonlighting police, a fact which renders the argument of “the failure of the public administration to provide the service” decidedly circular.
As a private party on his own free time, the policeman whose salary your taxes pay charges you a second time for doing his job.
Not mentioned here is that the federal police, a couple of years ago, began running “fair warning” seminars for private security firms before starting to enforce new federal legislation on this topic.
[more]
ConJur again:
“No início, firmou-se o entendimento de que, mesmo não sendo condomínio sob a lógica da legislação especial de regência, os loteamentos fechados passaram a ter tratamento igual, através de associações constituídas por moradores, obrigando a todos sob o princípio jurídico que repudia o enriquecimento sem causa”, explica o advogado Lauro Schuch.
“At first, there was a firm understanding according to which blocked-off residential tracts, even though not technically condominiums under the law, could receive the same treatment through the funding of associations with residents as members, obliging all residents to pay under the legal principle that bars self-enrichment without due cause,” explains lawyer Lauro Schuch.
If the squeegee man wipes your windshield, even though you asked him not to, you have to pay him. It’s settled jurisprudence.
O consultor legislativo do Senado Federal Bruno Mattos e Silva, que já escreveu diversos livros sobre o tema, explica quais as diferenças entre condomínio e loteamento. O primeiro é um empreendimento, pode ser de casas ou prédios, que dá aos moradores o direito de usar uma área comum. Já o loteamento são diversos terrenos, com ruas no meio (desde que autorizadas pela prefeitura e pelo estado). “Nestes casos, as ruas passam para o domínio do município, assim como as áreas institucionais exigidas pelo poder público.” Aí, começa uma discussão sem fim: se pode ser impedido o livre tráfego na rua desses loteamentos.
Bruno Mattos e Silva, a legislative consultant to the federal senate who has written a number of books on the subject, explains the difference between condominiums and residential tracts.
The former is a private real estate development, residential or commercial, which gives property owners the right to use a common area. Tracts, on the other hand, comprise individual lots that are separated by public streets (so long as they are authorized by the city and state government.)
“In such cases, the streets become the domain of the city government, as do [[institutional areas]] required by elected authority.”
And so begins the endless debate: whether private parties can inhibit free movement on public streets.
Endless Debate or Tempest in a Teapot Dome?
“Endless debate?”
As far as I know, federal law — on public security, at least — trumps state and local law. End of debate. So that the “endless debate”” boils down to something like the “state’s rights” — hello, Jim Crow — doctrine preached by the Federalist Society.
And whether these people have the authority to grant what I seem to remember being called “easements,” and charge you rent for them, even though they have expropriated those rights?
It happens all the time, but I am pretty sure it is technically unambiguously illegal. The current government is not very latifúndio-friendly.
I really do not know much about how such matters are handled by different jurisidictions back home, but I am pretty sure that public streets as a general rule belong to the commons.
Here is a basic little tutorial on neighbor law affecting sidewalks, fences and trees from Realty Times.
WalkingInfo.org provides basic advice on rioting to realize this communist-inspired doctrine of Boston commonism.
When our tree fell over on top of the neighbors’ car here in the Vila, private auto insurance (theirs) took care of it — we helped the nice people with the claim by taking photos of the carnage.
I remember as a kid coming home one day and finding the enormous mountain ash tree, planted in like 1930, in our back yard, gone. Though situated well within our property, its root system was cracking the public sidewalk of both neighbors.
I was too young to understand the situation in detail, but it seems to me as though we had to pay for the tree removal while the city sent their guys in to bring the sidewalks back up to code, using materials purchased by the city at wholesale prices.
Now, enforcing a standard specifying materials that have to be purchased at retail prices and installed to code: Nice work for some people, if they can get it.
Potemkin Villagers Bused to the Vila!
Mayor Kassab (DEM) — currently governing pending appeal of a conviction on illegal campaign finance charges — was actually here the other day to inaugurate our local park-creek renovation project.
(The park project is nice, but the creek project seemed totally unnecessary to the neighbors, including the civil servant geologist up the street.)
City workers arrived the day before to repaint the little bridge over the creek and to remove the folk art contributed by neighbors — deeming it unsuitable as a televised backdrop to yet another photo op in the Cidade Limpa “clean city” campaign.
More city workers arrived on the day with no apparent reason to be there other than to swell the ranks of an underwhelming turnout by us local yokels.
It continues to be notable how often the local press, previously and traditionally supportive, to a fault, of the PSDB-DEM alliance formed under the auspices of Malufism during the Pitta years, now reports extensively on facts not necessarily favorable to the DEM side of the alliance.
Conjecture: I think the DEM may be losing its hold and getting sent to political Siberia (PQP, in local parlance) by the One Big Party.
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