{"id":28023,"date":"2016-04-13T08:00:36","date_gmt":"2016-04-13T11:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=28023"},"modified":"2019-01-29T12:08:45","modified_gmt":"2019-01-29T15:08:45","slug":"babilonia-residents-face-removal-due-to-abandonment-of-morar-carioca-promises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=28023","title":{"rendered":"Babil\u00f4nia Residents Face Distant Removal Due to Abandonment of Morar Carioca Promises"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas<\/a><\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

On his way past a group of houses at the top of the hill of Babil\u00f4nia<\/a>\u00a0favela in Rio de Janeiro’s South Zone<\/a> on March 31, Neighborhood\u00a0Association president Andr\u00e9 Constantine<\/a> stopped to tell two residents leaning out their windows about an important community meeting that would take place the following day. \u201cWe need to organize<\/a> to take action together,\u201d he stressed. \u201cWe need strength now.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a previous meeting at the Municipal Housing Secretariat (SMH)<\/a>, Andr\u00e9 had been informed that these residents and their neighbors had a choice: they could accept relocation to Chapad\u00e3o<\/a>, about 35 kilometers miles away in the North Zone<\/a>, or accept relocation to Santa Cruz<\/a>, some 65\u00a0kilometers\u00a0away in the West Zone<\/a>. This was the case for any Babil\u00f4nia resident in the area marked as high risk<\/a> (of landslides due to heavy rains on steep slopes), residents\u00a0of\u00a0the area marked as an Area of Environmental Protection (known by its Portuguese acronym as APA), and those currently receiving social rent<\/a> from the government, some\u00a0of whom have already been removed from homes in the high risk or APA areas.<\/p>\n

More than just another case of forced evictions<\/a> in pre-Olympic Rio, the situation of these residents exemplifies the broken promises of the favela upgrading program Morar Carioca<\/a>. Six years ago, the City promised they would be relocated within the side-by-side favelas\u00a0of Babil\u00f4nia and Chap\u00e9u-Mangueira<\/a> in new apartments built through Morar Carioca investments. Now in 2016, one of the three promised apartment blocks has still not been built and funding for the project has run dry.\u00a0As of a community meeting on April 3, the \u201cchoice\u201d between Santa Cruz and Chapad\u00e3o had already disappeared\u2014Andr\u00e9 informed social rent recipients that the City plans to relocate them all to Santa Cruz.<\/p>\n

\"Google<\/a><\/p>\n

Morar Carioca was a program launched in 2010\u00a0with the goal of upgrading all of Rio\u2019s favelas by 2020. Heavily marketed as a key component<\/a> of the Rio 2016 Olympics<\/a>\u2019 social legacy, the program received local and international praise, winning<\/a>\u00a0the 2013 City Climate Leadership Award<\/a> for “Sustainable Communities” from the C40<\/a> network of cities. (Note that\u00a0Mayor Eduardo Paes<\/a> has been the chairperson of C40 since 2013.)\u00a0C40’s materials state that “the aim [of Morar Carioca] is to keep people within their own communities” and “the goal is to resettle all those living under risky conditions by 2016,” and\u00a0they highlight\u00a0the case of Babil\u00f4nia and Chap\u00e9u-Mangueira as an implied success of the green sustainability initiative. Across the city, however, planned projects never materialized<\/a> and, according to sociologist Orlando Santos Jr<\/span><\/a>, Morar Carioca \u201cceased to be a priority to the municipal government, with no official explanation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Misplaced priorities<\/h3>\n

One of Andr\u00e9\u2019s biggest criticisms of Morar Carioca is the prioritization<\/a> of projects. He has copies of a map produced by the City in 2010 in which different areas were ranked from no-risk and low-risk to high-risk of landslides<\/a>, marking\u00a0residents of high-risk areas for relocation\u00a0within the community. A few residents were removed; many others remain.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom 2010 to now,\u201d he says, \u201csix years passed and nothing was done. No improvement was made to minimize the risks due to heavy rains<\/a>\u2026 For me, this already constitutes a crime.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the context of this identified urgent need, investment in solar panels and green architecture<\/a> had value but also signalled a disregard for community priorities. He compares the situation to a doctor who, after diagnosing a patient, doesn\u2019t treat the most serious illness or injury, potentially leaving the patient to die. \u201cFrom the moment the City identified an area…with the classification of high risk, the City must bring about the construction\u201d to address the issue. The Neighborhood\u00a0Association president has pushed for the City to deliver the remaining promised housing\u00a0through both written letters and in-person meetings, so far to little avail.<\/p>\n

According to Andr\u00e9, when two of the promised three apartment blocks were built under Morar Carioca, two tailored apartments were designated for individuals with disabilities but the rest were assigned through a lottery. He argues there should have been a list of families in order of priority for housing, posted on a wall for everyone to see, beginning with people living in the area of highest risk and the elderly. Instead he recalls, \u201cWe didn\u2019t have this transparency here. We didn\u2019t have any dialogue with this disrespectful City.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"City<\/p>\n

This experience is a far cry from the design of the Morar Carioca policy, which was lauded for its emphasis on community participation<\/a> in directing project implementation. An architect contracted for Morar Carioca in Babil\u00f4nia told <\/span>The Guardian<\/span><\/i><\/a> that the City and State governments had not allowed the level\u00a0of community participation the architects would have liked. Andr\u00e9 claims that at no point did the City present a full project plan, with a timeline and budget, to the community; nor have City officials officially informed the community what everyone already appears to know\u2014that further works have been indefinitely suspended.<\/span><\/p>\n

Marcia Sales is one resident whose family was removed from their\u00a0home, located in both the area of risk and the APA. She echoes Andr\u00e9\u2019s frustration with the Morar Carioca process: \u201cThis work, in my opinion, was not done in partnership with the community… They already came with [the plan] ready. You basically don\u2019t have an option, either you accept it or you don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

When they vacated their house in 2010, Marcia\u2019s family was awarded social rent while they waited for a promised Morar Carioca apartment, and they \u201cwere lucky,\u201d in her words, to find a place lower down on the hill to rent. Despite the fact that officials had said in 2010 that their home could fall and destroy a house directly below it, the City did not actually demolish the home until earlier this year. Now, Marcia says the City is threatening to take away the social rent: \u201cIf you don\u2019t accept to go to these places,\u201d referring to Santa Cruz, \u201c[the City] says, ‘in that case [the social rent] will be cut.”\u201d<\/p>\n

Having just started a new job at a neighborhood day care center, Marcia doesn\u2019t know how her family would manage to access or find new employment if they lived in Santa Cruz, especially given the current economic crisis. Plus, she adds, she likes living so \u201cclose to everything\u201d in Babil\u00f4nia, where she has lived her whole life along with her friends.<\/p>\n

\"Babil\u00f4nia's<\/p>\n

Mobilizing in response<\/h3>\n

At recent open community meetings, Andr\u00e9 and other residents have been planning for the process ahead. \u201cIt\u2019s not your fault,\u201d the Association president assures attendees, that the City has failed to fulfill its commitments, adding that \u201csometimes what the City presents is not real.\u201d He argues a strong collective community response is the only way to hold the City accountable to deliver promised homes within the neighborhood. The City is trying to negotiate with families on an individual basis, a strategy that has been documented in eviction cases<\/a> throughout Rio. Andr\u00e9 describes this as \u201ca form of weakening our cohesiveness,\u201d and asks residents only to agree to meet with the City with the support of the Neighborhood\u00a0Association and the public defenders<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we need now,\u201d he insists passionately, \u201cis judicial action and protest\u2026 We need to create political pressure.\u201d This includes seizing opportunities for international media<\/a> coverage ahead of the Olympics, and the community plans to use signs in both Portuguese and English in upcoming protests.<\/p>\n

Infrastructure quality<\/h3>\n

\"Leaking<\/p>\n

Under Morar Carioca, two apartment blocks were constructed, the main road was paved\u2014with asphalt and recycled rubber tires\u2014and extended, and drainage systems were extended and fortified.<\/p>\n

But go to the first apartment block, which opened four years ago, and resident Jo\u00e3o Medeiros da Silva can point out<\/a> multiple locations where walls and ceilings feature damp patches, leaks and corrosion, and where a light knock on the external walls will result in a surprisingly hollow sound.<\/p>\n

Go to the second block, which opened just last year, and Antonia Bertania can point out where water enters<\/a> through her daughter\u2019s bedroom wall during heavy rains. Her family moved into the brand new building on April 9, 2015; the first incident of water leaking through the walls occurred one week later.<\/p>\n

\"Resident<\/p>\n

Next to the first apartment block, an empty square lies barren where three families\u2019 homes were removed to clear space for a cultural and social center that was never built. At the site destined for the undelivered third apartment block, a number of small businesses were removed along with a plot of old trees.<\/p>\n

\"Empty<\/p>\n

The paved road facilitates access to a large part of the community and is especially important for emergency services. Yet it only goes part of the way to its original planned destination. When asked when he thought the road would be completed, Andr\u00e9 chuckled, shrugged, and guessed, \u201cnever?\u201d<\/p>\n

And then\u00a0there are oddities\u00a0like the occasional electricity posts towards the end of the road that are stuck, defiantly, in the path of any\u00a0vehicles wider than a motorbike. The road and the drains running alongside it have sections\u00a0that are in need of maintenance, but Andr\u00e9 says there\u2019s no evidence of a plan or budget in place for upkeep of the infrastructure.<\/p>\n

\"Electricity<\/p>\n

Reacting to the award<\/h3>\n

In response to the C40 award and recognition Morar Carioca has received over the years, Andr\u00e9 states: \u201cThis project is an embarrassment. And to win these prizes, it\u2019s even more embarrassing.\u201d<\/p>\n

He acknowledges that Morar Carioca in Babil\u00f4nia has been labeled as the \u201cgreen Morar Carioca,\u201d but points out that the Area of Environmental Protection, established in the 1990s, could have been more logically drawn from the point of the highest house upwards, rather than including part of the land that had already been settled. In his view, \u201cit\u2019s obvious that these things give a lot of visibility, the environmental question… Since that recent event, the Rio+20 [United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in 2012], it\u2019s just \u2018for the English to see<\/a>.\u2019 The problem is that everything is done \u2018for the English to see,\u2019 and things don\u2019t work in reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

He argues the Morar Carioca project is just one part\u00a0of a larger project of \u201cthe mayor who has removed more<\/a> [people] than any other in Rio\u2019s history\u201d to create\u00a0\u201ca city that\u2019s very good for investing, a business city, but really bad for the citizen\u2026 A city where the poor, black, Northeastern people who built\u00a0it are not included.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marcia, in turn, admits that Morar Carioca is \u201cbeautiful on paper,\u201d but it \u201creally needs to function in another form, one which attends more to the needs of the community.\u201d She concludes that it would be good if the people who gave the award \u201ccould come [here], because what Morar Carioca is, how Morar Carioca functions, is truly different from what is presented.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas On his way past a group of houses at the top of the hill of Babil\u00f4nia\u00a0favela in Rio de Janeiro’s South Zone on March 31, Neighborhood\u00a0Association president Andr\u00e9 Constantine stopped to […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":28046,"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":[1293,1267,1854,1668,1288,1290,335,336,1329],"tags":[1027,2271,1645,525,756,272,1496,11,1723,282,755,151,324,673,147,197,618,5,1292,821,980,135,156,471,300,365],"writer":[1352],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-28023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-evictionswatch","8":"category-gentrificationwatch","9":"category-housingwatch","10":"category-participationwatch","11":"category-highlight","12":"category-civilsociety","13":"category-policies","14":"category-violations","15":"category-by-international-observers","16":"tag-area-of-risk-designation","17":"tag-for-the-english-to-see","18":"tag-piv","19":"tag-chapeu-mangueira","20":"tag-community-organizing","21":"tag-mayor-eduardo-paes","22":"tag-eviction-tactics-divide-and-conquer","23":"tag-forced-evictions","24":"tag-green-building","25":"tag-housing","26":"tag-infrastructure","27":"tag-landslide-risk","28":"tag-marketing","29":"tag-misplaced-public-priorities","30":"tag-morar-carioca","31":"tag-morro-da-babilonia","32":"tag-neighborhood-association","33":"tag-olympics","34":"tag-organizing","35":"tag-poor-quality-replacement-housing","36":"tag-social-legacy","37":"tag-social-rent","38":"tag-south-zone","39":"tag-sustainability","40":"tag-transparency","41":"tag-zero-participation","42":"writer-cerianne-robertson"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28023","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\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28023"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=28023"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=28023"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=28023"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=28023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}