Redes como arranjos estratégicos para ganho de escala em ações de melhorias habitacionais

Currently, the right of low-income families to technical assistance for housing improvement in Brazil is implemented in an individualized and specific manner, which hinders the achievement of economies of scale. Therefore, an important challenge for public policy, already guaranteed by law, is to expand the scale of service delivery. Official data estimate an inadequacy indicator for households that is more than four times higher than the housing deficit indicator. The formation of networks as a strategy to achieve economies of scale in public policies aimed at housing improvements is proposed to broaden the reach of programs and enhance service outcomes. For its effectiveness, the need for planning complementary strategies to enable collaborative work is emphasized. In this context, this article aims to analyze the application or absence of network formation strategies to achieve economies of scale in housing improvement actions implemented in Brazil. To this end, it identifies scale-gain strategies in public policies aligned with the context of housing improvements and examines their implementation in actions carried out across the national territory. Although applied sporadically or in isolation, with low effectiveness, the results showed that network formation was utilized in most cases. However, it was observed that these strategies, when applied in isolation, are insufficient and need to be structured collectively. Thus, as a contribution, the article proposes some guidelines for developing joint strategies across various spheres and scales.