{"id":22558,"date":"2015-06-15T12:00:16","date_gmt":"2015-06-15T15:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=22558"},"modified":"2015-07-02T04:48:19","modified_gmt":"2015-07-02T07:48:19","slug":"former-residents-of-vila-autodromo-denounce-problems-in-parque-carioca-properties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=22558","title":{"rendered":"Former Residents of Vila Aut\u00f3dromo Denounce Problems in Parque Carioca Replacement Housing"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the original in Portuguese by Vladimir Platonow, published in Ag\u00eancia Brasil, click here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Nearly a week after the confrontation<\/a> between residents of Vila Aut\u00f3dromo<\/a> and municipal guards in Jacarepagu\u00e1, near the future Olympic Village, the community mobilized once again on June 8. At the same site, they denounced the practices of the Municipal Solicitor General who residents say has acted inappropriately towards residents in dispossession negotiations<\/a>. Residents also\u00a0complained that the properties of Parque Carioca<\/a>\u2014the public housing complex to which\u00a0many residents were removed<\/a>, built\u00a0by the Rio city government in partnership with Caixa Econ\u00f4mica Federal\u2014are uninhabitable.<\/p>\n

On\u00a0Wednesday, June 3, the City attempted to demolish a house in which five people were living in Vila Aut\u00f3dromo<\/a>, on the banks of the Jacarepagu\u00e1 Lagoon, defying a decision by the State Court of Justice, according to the State of Rio’s Public Defender’s Office. The family and neighbors resisted the demolition, and several ended up wounded by batons and rubber bullets.<\/p>\n

The house belongs to motorist Ocimar da Silva Miranda, 46, who lives with his wife and two daughters, 3 and 6 years old, as well as his elderly father, in a 60m2 home. According to Ocimar\u2019s wife, Melry Nascimento Brito, 37, the City is offering a very low price as compensation for the property, R$122,000 ($US40,000), and is attempting to coerce the residents in negotiations<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t accept this price. I requested that [the solicitor responsible for the negotiations] pay me what\u2019s fair, so I can\u00a0find a better place. He responded by saying that since we were already accustomed to living in a favela, it shouldn\u2019t make any difference to us,\u201d recalled Melry. \u201cHe humiliates people. With this price, I won\u2019t be able to find any property that is big enough for us, neither close by nor far away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marcel Silva Marques, the solicitor responsible for the negotiation, could not be reached by Ag\u00eancia Brasil<\/em>. In a written response, the Municipal Solicitor General\u2019s Office denied that he had applied subjective criteria in evaluating the properties and that he had acted inappropriately. \u201cThe appraisal of properties to establish the compensation value is done by specialized engineers and architects, experienced in evaluations, and it follows a pattern,\u201d read\u00a0the note.<\/p>\n

Unlike Melry and Ocimar, Let\u00edcia Silva Alvez, 26, accepted an offer to trade her house in the community for a property in the Minha Casa Minha Vida (MCMV)<\/a> federal housing program, in Parque Carioca<\/a>. However, as a result of structural problems in the new apartment, she moved back to live with her father and two daughters in Vila Aut\u00f3dromo less than 6 months later.<\/p>\n

\u201cI received an apartment with three bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, bathroom and a small balcony. But the work was all poorly done. In the bathroom, plaster is falling and a hole is opening up. In the kitchen, water comes through the floor, the drains are all blocked and all sorts of things come back up\u2014rice, beans. If you try to close the drain, it shoots back up like a fountain,\u201d says Let\u00edcia, who does not know whom she should call for help. Caixa Econ\u00f4mica, responsible for the\u00a0venture, did not clarify the state of repairs\u2014if they planned to do them, or if they were already underway.<\/p>\n

In Vila Aut\u00f3dromo, among the 150 families resisting relocation\u2013from the 450 that originally lived there\u2013is the family of 50-year-old Maria da Penha Macedo. She was among those injured in last week\u2019s confrontation<\/a>. She intervened because she found the removal of her neighbor Ocimar to be unjust. \u201cThey were two children and a senior citizen. Where would they go on such short notice?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n

For Maria da Penha, who also does not want to leave Vila Aut\u00f3dromo, the money the City is giving for compensation will not buy a better place to live. \u201cI\u2019m used to the comfort of a backyard\u2014in my home, we have plants that bear fruit: mango, guava, acerola, avocado. You can even sunbathe. I mean, I live well. I have my house, which I built with sacrifice. Why would I have to leave to go live in an apartment where they don\u2019t even have an elevator? I\u2019m getting old,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The Public Defender accompanied the families and is hoping for meetings with the City and Solicitor General in the Court of Justice, in an attempt to rectify the situation.\u00a0 For the time being, the judicial decision obtained by the Public Defender prevails, preventing\u00a0the destruction of any house in Vila Aut\u00f3dromo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the original in Portuguese by Vladimir Platonow, published in Ag\u00eancia Brasil, click here.\u00a0 Nearly a week after the confrontation between residents of Vila Aut\u00f3dromo and municipal guards in Jacarepagu\u00e1, near the future Olympic Village, […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":17200,"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":[1293,1736,1288,1330,336],"tags":[11,157,851,821,69,210,134,4,21],"writer":[1660],"translator":[1659],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-22558","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-translation","11":"category-violations","12":"tag-forced-evictions","13":"tag-minha-casa-minha-vida","14":"tag-parque-carioca","15":"tag-poor-quality-replacement-housing","16":"tag-public-defenders","17":"tag-public-housing","18":"tag-zero-compensation","19":"tag-vila-autodromo","20":"tag-west-zone","21":"writer-vladimir-platonow","22":"translator-christopher-owens"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22558","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=22558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22558"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=22558"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=22558"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=22558"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=22558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}