The occupation Solano Trindade in Duque de Caxias exists since 2014, when a group of people within the social movement MNLM occupied a building located in an abandoned area of about 50.000m²in the city of Duque de Caxias. Several actions implemented in the occupation involve the social movement and current inhabitants, different research groups from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), the cooperative Liga Urbana among others. Currently, around 100 families are registered for a housing project and some of them participated in its progress. 

 

Since 2014, the Graduate Program in Urbanism of the School of Architecture and Urbanism (PROURB/FAU), the Metropolis Observatory of the Research and Urban Planning Institute (IPPUR), the Interdisciplinary Nucleus For Social Development (NIDES), among other groups of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)  have been carrying out projects within an extension program towards innovative social technologies for the development of collaborative forms of work and production through cooperation between students, scholars, inhabitants and MNLM. 

 

Additionally, research groups of UFRJ (naMORAR, Leau, among others), and technicians who worked with self-organizing building processes or/and interested in solidarity economy, formed the "Catálise" (Catalysis), a collective that works with Solano Trindade. A research group named MUDA, focused on agro-ecological experiences joined them and with the dwellers, they have carried out six agro-ecological experiences in the occupation.

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Actions carried in Solano Trindade are based on a legal framework which guarantees the social function of the urban property, namely the City Statute - Law n. 10.257, July 10th, 2001 (o Estatuto da Cidade). This law establishes that urban land can not be used for real estate speculation and can not be idle for more than five years. If so, it must have progressive taxation until the point where the state can expropriate the land for a social use. Few municipalities have complied with this law, thus, MNLM has been acting in order to exhort the government to abide to it. It is important to note that the land occupied by Solano Trindade is public land that was idle since at least the end of the 1990s.