Substandard housing abounds in Favela dos Trilhos in Goiania, Brazil.
Crumbling walls, overcrowded rooms — step inside the substandard housing of South America
Photos by Steffan Hacker and Ezra Millstein
Substandard housing has many causes and comes in many shapes and sizes. Poverty, lack of access to land, swelling urban populations. Too many people living in too few rooms, roofs that leak, walls that sag.
In Brazil, Bolivia and Chile — and in countries around the world — low-income families often are forced to construct their own shelters from found materials or to crowd into cramped quarters in city neighborhoods. The families do the best they can all on their own, making a home out of a house that is sometimes literally falling down around them.
