{"id":22033,"date":"2015-05-18T09:00:28","date_gmt":"2015-05-18T12:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=22033"},"modified":"2017-09-15T08:56:28","modified_gmt":"2017-09-15T11:56:28","slug":"the-olympics-serve-to-legitimize-removals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=22033","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe Olympics Serve to Legitimize Evictions\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the original in Portuguese with video, by Bruno Porpetta, published in Brasil de Fato and Brasil247,\u00a0click\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Architect Lucas Faulhaber and journalist Lena Azevedo have launched a book<\/a> that documents the history of arbitrary<\/a> evictions<\/a>\u00a0in the city of Rio, using statistics from the Municipal Housing Secretariat. They spoke to Brasil de Fato<\/a><\/em> about their experience.<\/h2>\n

Brasil de Fato:\u00a0Out of the 67,000 evictions\u00a0that have taken place in Rio, the statistics show that 44.5% of them are made under allegations that residents are at risk<\/a>. What kind of risk does the City cite and what do residents think?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Lucas:\u00a0<\/b>In the data we took from the City, the risks are not specifically cited. We believe that \u201crisk\u201d is not the real reason for removing families. On an unofficial level we hear of geotechnical risks as the basis for removal, but this is not specifically mentioned in the Housing Secretariat\u2019s documents.<\/p>\n

Another curious thing is that a large number\u00a0of these \u201careas of risk\u201d are in the most lucrative parts of the city or areas with potential to become lucrative. It\u2019s a big coincidence that these areas are outlined as \u201careas of risk.\u201d We are treating this as suspicious, because it is difficult to question the risk argument.<\/p>\n

Provid\u00eancia<\/a> is an example of this; the government said that 800 families needed to be removed there, using reports by GeoRio (the City’s geological surveying department) to prove the families were living in an area of risk. But the residents managed to speak up and hired\u00a0other experts who presented a counter report saying the allegation of risk was unfounded. The counter report said it wouldn\u2019t be necessary to remove anyone, all that was needed was hillside containment which would actually work out being cheaper than removing everyone. The difficulty of countering the risk argument is that communities don\u2019t have the technical support to question it.<\/p>\n

Lena:\u00a0<\/b>The City cited risk as an argument for eviction\u00a0in Indiana<\/a>, which is the lower part of Bor\u00e9u,\u00a0because the Maracan\u00e3 stream, which runs through the community, was at risk of overflowing. But it had never overflowed, it hadn\u2019t even gotten close to overflowing. So an expert was called in and GeoRio was forced to admit there actually was a low risk of flooding in the area.<\/p>\n

The only reason judges did not stop the construction of the Provid\u00eancia cable car was because the equipment had already been bought and it would mean a huge loss if the work didn\u2019t go ahead. Houses were removed in the area in order to build the cable car<\/a>, not because of risk. In Palmeiras, Complexo do Alem\u00e3o<\/a>, the large amount of rain in December 2013<\/a> caused a street to collapse, taking houses down with it. But it hadn’t previously been an \u201carea of risk;\u201d it became one<\/a> only because of poorly-made\u00a0Growth Acceleration Program<\/a> (PAC) works there.<\/p>\n

PAC workers built\u00a0the road, connected to the Palmeiras cable car station, on top of a spring. The road collapsed due to the rain, taking down houses with it and putting other houses at risk. The City is so disorganized that it took a few\u00a0of the\u00a0houses\u00a0at risk due to the collapsed road and marked them\u00a0off limits due to safety concerns.\u00a0While some people in the area who had nothing to do with the flooding received\u00a0social rent<\/a> from the government, those whose houses had been marked unsafe\u00a0applied to receive the same assistance\u00a0but the City never found their applications; this means that someone else probably received money in their name. When the City\u00a0saw it couldn\u2019t find these residents\u2019 applications it removed the ‘unsafe’ demarcation, but the houses really were in an area that was at risk of collapsing. I even have the documents that show the government\u2019s change of direction. So there are areas of risk where the City does not undertake relocations\u00a0and there are areas that are not at risk at all but where the City uses this argument to remove houses. This is what is happening. Removals are selective.<\/p>\n

Brasil de Fato: Are the evictions\u00a0just linked to the Olympic Games or are there other factors at play?<\/b><\/h3>\n

Lucas:\u00a0<\/b>The Olympics are not the real reason for removals. They serve as a justification to legitimize evictions, as well as a reason to press on with the timeline. The real motive is property speculation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lena: <\/b>In reality, there are private interests behind this whole process of forced evictions. For example, Indiana is not connected to the mega-events infrastructure, but it is right next to a middle class condominium. So the reason for eviction\u00a0is to make way for the construction of another building or to build a huge leisure space for the luxury condominium.<\/p>\n

Brasil de Fato: Where do families go when they are removed and what are the implications of this?<\/b><\/h3>\n

Lucas:<\/strong>\u00a0We made a map<\/a> to show where people were removed from and where they ended up, which shows families moving from one end of the city to the other. Many went to live in public housing built by the Minha Casa Minha Vida<\/a>\u00a0[federal housing] program, generally very far away, with a lack of infrastructure<\/a>, transport, health services and all the rest. And a lot of this public housing is in areas which are controlled by militias<\/a> or drug traffickers, the majority of the militias being in the West Zone<\/a> of the city.<\/p>\n

\"Light<\/a>
Light green = favelas where evictions took place. Orange = MCMV public housing. Zones 1-4 = Olympic zones. Dark blue circle = Port redevelopment.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lena:\u00a0<\/strong>Even before people were removed to the West Zone, that region of Santa Cruz<\/a> and Campo Grande<\/a> already had a huge population, lack of infrastructure and schools and a precarious transport system, despite the Bus Rapid Transit<\/a> line passing through there. You can see this in the large number of protests happening in the area due to the lack of public transport. There are no health centers, basic sanitation is precarious, everything is very precarious. Militias<\/a> have occupied lots of apartment buildings. Some of the buildings have been taken back through the courts. But anyway, anyone who knows the militia knows how they operate. Fees, intimidation, curfews. So, as well as living in a precarious situation, residents are in the hands of criminal groups<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is what the State is\u00a0doing to evicted\u00a0families. And another thing: when they are evicted\u00a0to the West Zone, many of them lose their jobs because their company, or their employer (in the case of domestic workers), will say \u201cI\u2019m not going to pay for you to take two buses to get to work.\u201d So many people lose their jobs or spend three hours getting to work and three hours getting home. This is what\u2019s going on. These people are losing their quality of life in every way possible<\/a>. Families are being broken up because some people prefer to move to a smaller apartment anywhere but in the West Zone, because they won\u2019t be able to keep their jobs if they move there. So some of the family goes and the rest stay.<\/p>\n

There are health consequences<\/a> of eviction\u00a0too. Take Vila Aut\u00f3dromo<\/a>, where evictions\u00a0are still going on: one of the people I interviewed died after being evicted. He was the first ever resident of Vila Aut\u00f3dromo and he died a week after being evicted. As well as him, five or six other elderly people died too. They died of heart attacks, strokes and very bad depression. There is no way to justify this happening: the City should be held criminally accountable for this.<\/p>\n

Brasil de Fato: In 2016, when the City’s construction is all completed and functioning, how can the question of evictions\u00a0play a part in the elections?<\/b><\/h3>\n

Lucas:\u00a0<\/b>I think this should be done through mobilizing people who were affected by these building works, through social movements, through the independent media, through human rights organizations. Because we have seen around 70,000 people removed from their houses and this has had very little coverage in the mainstream\u00a0media.<\/p>\n

Lena:\u00a0<\/b>I don\u2019t know how anyone can say this is a perfect city. And will the government use military tanks to stop protests taking place? Because there will be protests. The UPP (Pacifying Police Unit<\/a>) process is not going well. The foreign press has been much more critical than the local press in this respect. So I don\u2019t know if this vision of the perfect city will survive. Because those who oppose the government will do all they can to show that it doesn\u2019t exist. It\u2019s unthinkable that the government is spending public money on creating a rainwater collection system in Vila Aut\u00f3dromo, when an identical system was already put in place there in 2007. What kind of Olympic legacy<\/a> is this? I want to know where the Public Defender’s<\/a> Office is, to question all this. Take the golf course that was built<\/a>, that the International Olympic Committee said was not even necessary. The is a more critical media which has been amplified through social media, and the foreign press\u00a0has been looking at what\u2019s going on with a more critical eye too.<\/p>\n

Brasil de Fato: Is it possible to bring evicted\u00a0communities together into a united struggle? Has this been done? Where?<\/b><\/h3>\n

Lucas:\u00a0<\/b>This is already happening<\/a>. There are various spaces which communities are using to make their voices heard. Examples include Vila Aut\u00f3dromo, the Committee for People affected by the Transoeste BRT Line (Comit\u00ea de Atingidos pela Transoeste) and the Popular Committee on\u00a0the World Cup and Olympics<\/a> (Comit\u00ea Popular da Copa e das Olimp\u00edadas). There are other forums in which universities are present too. Of course, it is difficult to get organized because the City is working to stop people being heard. A new forum is currently being proposed that will include communities that have been removed or that are being threatened with eviction, as well as communities that are suffering from eviction\u00a0in an indirect way\u2014from a process called \u201cremo\u00e7\u00e3o branca,\u201d (white eviction) or gentrification<\/a>. This gentrification<\/a>\u00a0is mostly happening in communities in the South Zone<\/a> of Rio.<\/p>\n

Lena:\u00a0<\/b>But what I noticed, in conversations with people in Vila Aut\u00f3dromo, is that resistance is very fragile. When the walls of people\u2019s houses were being knocked down<\/a> residents couldn\u2019t ring anyone to call for help because they didn\u2019t have credit on their cellphones. I think the support groups need to be in closer contact. Vila Aut\u00f3dromo is right in the area that the City is targeting right now. My impression is that people are not managing to get their voices heard that well, but I hope this changes, like what happened in Metr\u00f4-Mangueira<\/a>. Evictions\u00a0went ahead there but residents were there resisting, giving visibility to this violent process. This process did not stop when the World Cup ended; it kept on going. Some communities gained a bit of respite, but others continue to be threatened.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the original in Portuguese with video, by Bruno Porpetta, published in Brasil de Fato and Brasil247,\u00a0click\u00a0here. Architect Lucas Faulhaber and journalist Lena Azevedo have launched a book that documents the history of arbitrary evictions\u00a0in […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":22065,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1293,1736,1288,1284,335,1282,1330,328,336],"tags":[1027,804,606,150,521,32,226,1497,19,803,11,65,205,883,151,327,33,673,157,5,144,69,10,383,135,156,4,21,167,1093],"writer":[1632],"translator":[1401],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-22033","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-evictionswatch","8":"category-1736","9":"category-highlight","10":"category-interviews-profiles","11":"category-policies","12":"category-research-analysis","13":"category-translation","14":"category-understanding-rio","15":"category-violations","16":"tag-area-of-risk-designation","17":"tag-borel","18":"tag-brt","19":"tag-cable-car","20":"tag-campo-grande","21":"tag-complexo-do-alemao","22":"tag-consequences-of-eviction-health","23":"tag-eviction-tactics-misinformation","24":"tag-favela-do-metro","25":"tag-flood-risk","26":"tag-forced-evictions","27":"tag-gentrification","28":"tag-growth-acceleration-program-pac","29":"tag-indiana","30":"tag-landslide-risk","31":"tag-legacy-myth","32":"tag-militia","33":"tag-misplaced-public-priorities","34":"tag-minha-casa-minha-vida","35":"tag-olympics","36":"tag-morro-da-providencia","37":"tag-public-defenders","38":"tag-real-estate-speculation","39":"tag-santa-cruz","40":"tag-social-rent","41":"tag-south-zone","42":"tag-vila-autodromo","43":"tag-west-zone","44":"tag-world-cup","45":"tag-zero-planning","46":"writer-bruno-porpetta","47":"translator-sarah-jacobs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22033"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=22033"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=22033"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=22033"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=22033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}