depending on the favela, these houses can be as comfortable as a normal home, or as basic and unfinished as a street shelter.

in the past, many of these brick homes were built on hills' sides without proper foundations, often causing them to collapse during heavy rains -  this  increased the urgency of  several city and state development programs to prioritize safety issues in urbanization programs.

between 2008 and 2013 alone, the areas of the city occupied by favelas decreased by over 2% - a reduction of about one million square meters, mostly due to the urbanization works addressing homes and communities built in risky or unstable hill-side areas.

present in some form since the beginning of favelas, over a century ago, there is an active real estate market inside most favelas, where its estimated that up to 30% of homes in some communities are actually rental properties.