On April 4th 2010, heavy rainfall hit the city of Rio de Janeiro and the surrounding region. Morro do Bumba, a hill in the city of Niterói, located in the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area, collapsed bringing down more than 50 homes, causing the death of 67 (40 males and 27 females) and leaving more than 1000 people unsheltered and homeless. Due to difficulties in offering adequate accommodations to the victims of this disaster, many of them were allocated in temporary shelters unsuitable for adequate housing. Minimum sanitary conditions were not met at these provisional shelters, with precarious installations including open sewers. The victims were imposed these precarious conditions while eagerly awaiting a public habitational policy warranting their right to an adequate housing condition. We understand that a Democratic State of Right should be directed by democratic norms and the public authorities’ respect to the fundamental rights, including amongst these the right to adequate housing. All this tragedy, as well as the difficulties experienced by the victims, outlines the public administration´s negligence in the city of Niteroi with the lower income population. The right to habitation has not been effectively warranted, considering shelters - that more than two years after the tragedy - may not be considered as provisory, and the public authorities’ efforts to offer housing units that does not comply with the number of victims left unhoused by the tragedy. The present work aims to discuss the process to guarantee the housing right to the victims of the disaster in Morro do Bumba, looking to outline the public authorities actions to effectively warrant this right. For this, we analyzed the arduous route faced by this victim population through the provisional shelters up to the conveyance of two habitational enterprises by the States’ Government, which did not comply to this communities’ housing demands.