Priscilla Mazenotti
Reporter - Agencia Brasil

Brasilia – One of the priorities of the National Social Interest Housing Fund (FNHIS), which this year has a US$472 million budget, is the improvement of life conditions of the people who live in houses on stilts, according to information by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in his weekly radio program, "Breakfast with the President", this Monday (6). "We are going to give priority to solving these people’s problems, as well as to urbanizing slums and areas that lack water and sewage treatment", said Lula.

The President considered the approval of the Fund a society’s victory. The FNHIS is the result of the first project of popular initiative presented to the National Congress. It took 13 years to go through the appropriate procedures.

Lula recalled that the resources of the Federal Mortgage and Savings Bank (Caixa Econômica Federal – CEF –, a state-controlled banking institution) to finance houses this year total US$8.8 billion.

Translation: Andréa Alves