Maria Nazare de Souza beams as she shows off her newfound wealth: a two-chair beauty salon with a tiny two-room apartment above it.
After renting for years in the vast slum of Heliopolis, de Souza and her husband fulfilled an almost unthinkable dream, becoming homeowners with the help of their savings and a loan requiring monthly payments of just 107 reals (US$59, euro39.84).
Souza hopes she can soon use credit to replace her secondhand stove, microwave oven and refrigerator with new appliances. All around her in this slum of 180,000 people, trucks delivering plasma TVs bought on payment plans rumble by new cars and the concrete homes that are rapidly …
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