Vetoed law prohibiting architecture hostile to homeless

President Jair Bolsonaro vetoed the bill that prohibits the use of materials and structures to remove homeless people from public places in cities. The information was disclosed by the Presidency of the Republic this Tuesday (13). The measure, authored by Senator Fabiano Contarato (PT-ES), included a guideline in the City Statute to prevent the use of “hostile construction techniques” in open spaces for public use. The bill became known as the Padre Júlio Lancelotti Law. Last year, the priest from São Paulo, who has a strong presence in favor of homeless people, went viral on social networks when he starred in a scene in which he tried to break sharp concrete stakes installed by the city of São Paulo under an overpass. The construction was intended to prevent people from staying in these places. In justifying the veto, the President of the Republic argued that, after hearing ministries, he concluded that the norm could “cause interference in the function of planning and local governance of urban policy, when seeking to define the characteristics and conditions to be observed for the installation physics of equipment and urban furniture”. In a note, the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic informed that: “The use of the expression of hostile constructive techniques could generate legal uncertainty, as it is a concept still under construction, that is, terminology that is still in the process of consolidation for its inclusion in the legal system”. The text had been approved by the National Congress at the end of November. The presidential veto will need to be appreciated by parliamentarians, who can maintain it, shelving the law, or be overturned, ensuring the validity of the measure.

Agência Brasil