{"id":32468,"date":"2016-09-07T08:58:36","date_gmt":"2016-09-07T11:58:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=32468"},"modified":"2020-08-07T14:03:50","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T17:03:50","slug":"isolation-debt-and-low-quality-of-life-in-rios-housing-projects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=32468","title":{"rendered":"Isolation, Debt and Low Quality of Life in Rio’s Housing Projects"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

For the original article by Ad\u00e9le Smith in French published by Le Monde click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

It was too good\u00a0to be true. When Isabella Ribeiro\u00a0received the keys to an elegant two-room apartment in April 2015, she\u00a0burst into tears \u201cof joy,\u201d says Ribeiro, who has lived her whole life\u201356 years\u2013in a favela. The federal government had just made her the happy owner of a 45 square-meter apartment in a brand new five-story building.<\/p>\n

In the Col\u00f4nia Juliano Moreira<\/a> housing complex, built on territory previously owned by slave owners, the roads were paved, there was running water, large orange garbage bins outside, and proper\u00a0sewerage. \u201cIt was beautiful,\u201d she remembers. She could not imagine the turn of events that would follow. A year and a half later, she finds herself threatened with eviction for unpaid credit<\/a>. \u201cI receive threatening letters, endless phone calls, someone from the bank called me a slut on the phone!\u201d she says, discouraged. Boxes filled with medication for blood pressure are scattered in her small living room, where a small statue of Christ stands.<\/p>\n

2.6 million home beneficiaries<\/h3>\n

Isabella is one\u00a0of some 2.6 million households\u00a0selected according to financial and health\u00a0criteria to benefit from Minha Casa Minha Vida<\/a>, the social housing program launched in 2009 by ex-president Lula for, as he said at the time, \u201cgetting people out of this s***.\u201d By escaping\u00a0[precarious]\u00a0favelas in which they were confined for generations, these poorly housed people were supposed to naturally escape misery. Large anti-poverty programs, led by Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva, gave the wildest hopes to citizens of this country, where inequality<\/a> thrives. The Bolsa Fam\u00edlia<\/a> cash transfer program, notably, is the social program most reproduced in the world.<\/p>\n

Although neither innovative nor original, Minha Casa Minha Vida has in seven years become the most ambitious social housing program in Brazil since the end of the dictatorship<\/a>, with 4.5 million small houses and apartments delivered\u00a0or under construction. It has had a certain impact on the housing deficit, but the impact\u00a0on poverty is questionable. The\u00a0future of the program is uncertain<\/a>. With the end of the Brazilian economic miracle and the immense disappointment around President Dilma Rousseff, criticism has crystallized around left-wing social policies, deemed too costly. Michel Temer\u2019s government intends to reform Minha Casa Minha Vida.<\/p>\n

In Rio, the program has\u00a0an additional particularity in the Olympics<\/a>. The Rio city government\u00a0has used the program, with remarkable opacity, to relocate residents of [in many cases functional] favelas that were destroyed for the Olympic Games. The mayor, Eduardo Paes<\/a>, promised free compensation housing, leaving the responsibility of repaying the property loan to the municipality instead of the owners. But in Col\u00f4nia, residents\u00a0continued to receive debt notices from creditors and are now being labeled as \u201cbad payers.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

Long waiting lists<\/h3>\n

Yet the program, better known by its acronym MCMV, is generous. It is subsidized\u00a0up to 95% by the State for almost half of its beneficiaries, those with very low incomes like Isabella (less than\u00a0R$1,800 per month, approximately US$550). It is also very popular. The waiting lists are long. But it relies on a\u00a0Public-Private Partnership<\/a> between the federal government and the real estate sector, facilitated by local authorities. In other words, the public works enterprises choose low\u00a0market value land on the cities\u2019 periphery and aim to make them profitable. This\u00a0does not necessarily produce human well-being.<\/p>\n

In Col\u00f4nia, today, there are tears in the\u00a0office of the condominium representative, part security guard, part\u00a0Mother Teresa, Julia de Oliveira. Reminders from creditors are far from being the only problem. As in other MCMV projects, the word \u201cbill\u201d provokes general anxiety. With their off-the-grid, wild development, favelas had a good side: people were not ruined financially. Here, of course, one must pay for everything: gas, television, Internet, but also electricity and condominium fees.<\/p>\n

Yet by moving to this suburb, isolated and far from the city\u2019s center, many have lost their jobs. Francisca Bezerra, a housewife, would never go back to her favela, but she had to give up the Internet and is now finding herself barred from accessing\u00a0credit. A recent sociology study from London School of Economics shows increasing financial difficulties in more and more of these projects.<\/p>\n

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

Isabella Ribeiro was a seamstress in the favela. She rented a studio near Col\u00f4nia, but ended up giving it up, incapable of facing the financial stress it caused. Her sewing machine and thread spools are now accumulating dust in a corner. These projects are built solely for housing, not for commercial or service purposes. As the saying goes, however, necessity is the mother of invention; we can thus spot here and there signs at windows offering small services such as hairdressing and manicures, just like in the favela.<\/p>\n

Isolated by an expressway, Col\u00f4nia was built in the West Zone<\/a> of Rio, deprived of access to metro lines. It is far from the city\u2019s Northeast zone and the center, where the majority of employment is concentrated. The number of traditional buses has been reduced<\/a> and the new ones, although faster, are much less frequent. \u201cWe are also still waiting on the clinic that was promised to us. The closest one is an hour away by car,\u201d adds Ariana, mother of a 5-year-old boy. To make things worse, water and electricity cuts are recurrent. In the middle of a conversation, caretaker Julia de Oliveira stops to block the road from an agent of the local water company, who came to cut the supply\u00a0without previous notice.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a constant battle,\u201d she explains after having persuaded the man to give up on his task. The residents refuse to pay the bills for water they had been promised would be provided for free. Julia de Oliveira blames the degradation of municipal services on the economic crisis. On the other hand, other residents suspect city government\u2019s disdain for the \u201cpoor.\u201d The neighboring housing project Parque Carioca<\/a>, presented as a \u201cmodel,\u201d is already in a mediocre state<\/a>. The swimming pool, intended for residents, has been abandoned.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe MCMV program unfortunately reproduces schemas of segregation<\/a> and social injustice,\u201d says Meg Healy<\/a>, researcher and collaborator with\u00a0the non-governmental organization Catalytic Communities<\/a>. Is Col\u00f4nia at risk of ghettoization in\u00a0the long term? \u201cNot at all, people have found their dignity here,\u201d reassures Julia de Oliveira, optimistic. With no husband or children but with two different jobs, she gets through her days fine, but recognizes that the joint effect of the economic crisis and isolation is a factor of insecurity. \u201cIt is more difficult for those who can\u2019t or don\u2019t want to work,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

A plan aiming to sustain the real estate sector<\/h3>\n

Ex-special rapporteur on adequate housing for the UN, Raquel Rolnik<\/a>, fears the program will create \u201cfuture ghettoes of poverty.\u201d Author of a recent book Guerra dos Lugares<\/em><\/a> (\u201cWar of Places\u201d), she deems that it is \u201cprimarily\u00a0a success for the public works and finance sectors.\u201d One must only remember the genesis of this plan launched in the middle of the electoral campaign, she says: presented as a policy of social housing, it had more of an objective to support the real estate construction sector and face the global financial crisis of 2008.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is in no case a program for social housing,\u201d she repeats, the interests of real estate speculators being \u201cincompatible\u201d with that of residents. Today, the public works sector is pressuring the government to maintain it. \u201cIt would not be wise to reduce or interrupt a program of such a large scope,\u201d confirms the president of the Association of Real Estate Company Directors (Ademi), Jo\u00e3o Paulo. R$300 billion (US$92 billion) have been invested since 2009.<\/p>\n

Of a modest size and less isolated than others, Col\u00f4nia is a \u201clight\u201d version of these giant complexes built in Brazil, but it is the same construction model that is found pretty much everywhere. On an afternoon like today, Patricia Fernandes can be found at the bottom of her building, killing time in the company of her neighbors. With no benches around, they sit on the ground. The complex\u2019s architect has apparently opted for a minimalist design.<\/p>\n

A touch of yellow and pink here and there brightens up the complex. But Col\u00f4nia could use some more trees, in this country where everything grows so easily. On the horizon, the green hills remind us that it\u2019s nature, not architecture, which makes Rio one of the most beautiful cities in the world. When boredom becomes too much in the complex, residents end up on the sofa watching telenovelas\u2013Patricia and her daughter love \u201cMy Heart Belongs to You.\u201d There is no hot water in the kitchen, no mirror in the bathroom, no lightbulb on the ceiling, but the plasma screen is sacred in Brazil.<\/p>\n

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

The young woman owns an apartment identical to that of Isabella Ribeiro but the Fernandes family is crammed. Six in this two-room apartment: her, her husband, their children of 11 and 18 years old, and her sister, who shares a single bed with her 5-year old son. Patricia is not a connoisseur of architecture, but she wonders why all the apartments are built with a large opening in the kitchen wall without a window to complement it. The picture is the same in other complexes. When it rains, the water has to be mopped up. Tropical rains in Brazil can transform your kitchen into a swimming pool if you don\u2019t take care of it.<\/p>\n

Unlike other residents, she doesn\u2019t have the problem of sinking floors, or cracks in the walls. The quality of MCMV construction is constantly the object of criticism<\/a>. In 2013, a brand new housing project had to be demolished before new arrivals moved in<\/a>. Walking through Col\u00f4nia, one can\u2019t help but wonder: how many years before this place becomes decrepit?<\/p>\n

Strict rules, a heavy atmosphere<\/h3>\n

During conversations with residents, one subject comes up\u00a0often. A new, clean apartment instead of a squalid shack is a wonderful idea on paper. But, in reality, these new projects cause a profound change in the urban fabric and lifestyles. Hygiene and good lighting are well appreciated; austerity and heaviness less so.<\/p>\n

There’s no music or outdoor barbecues that were the charm of communal life in the favelas. A large fence surrounds Col\u00f4nia, and each building is accessible solely via interphone. Only those invited can enter here. The rules are strict, sometimes arbitrary.<\/p>\n

Some don’t adapt well. Patricia was forced to abandon her dog, Jack. \u201cI would rather go back to the favela. The family house was larger and more comfortable. We felt more free,\u201d she explains. Some have already rented their apartment to go back to the favela or earn some extra money. Others are talking of selling, even though this is prohibited for ten years: an aspect of social housing that is itself not very \u201csocial.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

The second half of the program is reserved for middle class people with incomes from US$540 to US$1,900 per month, those which the Temer government intends to prioritize. They have a wide choice of geographic placement and apartments of slightly higher quality, but they are less affected by housing shortages and are anyway confined to large monolithic parcels. At least the MCMV program has opened up access to credit on the real estate market for them, a real progress in Brazil, concedes Raquel Rolnik.<\/p>\n

Many consider that, for a program so vital to urban development in Brazil, MCMV suffers from a serious democratic deficit. Daniel Fereira, a jovial man in his sixties, has always lived in a favela. He spent 20\u00a0years building his own house<\/a> of 57 square-meters and watched his children grow up in it. The government\u00a0offered him a 45 square-meter apartment\u2013a 12 square-meters downsize. He refused. \u201cBecause we are poor, people want us to accept anything and everything while the City and construction workers speculate behind your back. That\u2019s not democracy,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The president of the Brazilian Institute of\u00a0Architects (IAB), S\u00e9rgio Margalh\u00e2es, shares this opinion. The city, he defends, must be built in an inclusive manner. However, neither urban planners nor architects, nor those mainly concerned are really associated with this program, which is rather led by force by real estate contractors\u00a0and the government. \u201c80% of housing in Brazil has been built by people who are often very poor, without any help. Favelas are the direct result of that. To offer them the MCMV model is disrespectful,\u201d affirms Magalh\u00e3es, who advocates favela upgrading<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s actually a disaster for the future of cities<\/a>, he claims. \u201cHorizontal expansion of cities to the detriment of density, without the infrastructure or services that come with it, is a social, urban and environmental ticking bomb,\u201d he concludes in his Rio office. Governments sometimes have a short memory.<\/p>\n

The social housing policy of the 1960s in Brazil, of which MCMV is considered the near-perfect copy, gave birth, over two generations, to segregated communities of exclusion and violence like City of God<\/a>, immortalized in Fernando Meirelles\u2019 movie. Col\u00f4nia was built close to this immense favela. Drug traffickers<\/a> wander around the new housing projects and militia<\/a>\u00a0extort residents, who are afraid of speaking. In Col\u00f4nia, violence is already part of daily life.<\/p>\n

Lucas Mezes, a 20-year-old carpenter, would have never imagined that access to property could have such a significant human cost for his family. He and his two brothers, Thiago, 18, and Mattheus, 21, have all become owners of identical apartments. Two in Col\u00f4nia, and one in Parque Carioca, some kilometers away.<\/p>\n

In the past, the Mezes family lived in a favela that was known to be quite calm, Vila Aut\u00f3dromo<\/a>, now a symbol of resistance<\/a> against the Olympics. \u201cIt was a small paradise,\u201d remembers Lucas, whose face has been disfigured from eye to chin following a motorcycle accident. When their house was destroyed, their father, a fisherman on the lagoon, never recovered, recounts the young man. The family of five was separated geographically, all arbitrarily. For the trio of boys, who are very close, this was challenging.<\/p>\n

Last month, the eldest son, Mattheus, was killed in Col\u00f4nia by four bullets to the back following a misunderstanding. Lucas is now responsible for his family. Quite a burden for a 20-year old. \u201cMy dream today is that my life doesn\u2019t go down the deep end.\u201d But Lucas has kept the joie de vivre<\/em>\u00a0typical of Brazilians: he is convinced that his family has a future in the housing project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas For the original article by Ad\u00e9le Smith in French published by Le Monde click here. It was too good\u00a0to be true. When Isabella Ribeiro\u00a0received the keys to an elegant two-room apartment […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":32547,"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":[1293,1854,1668,1288,335,1330,328],"tags":[231,609,226,626,506,11,869,157,851,821,210,149,28,10,1616,421,4,21],"writer":[2194],"translator":[2195],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-32468","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-evictionswatch","8":"category-housingwatch","9":"category-participationwatch","10":"category-highlight","11":"category-policies","12":"category-translation","13":"category-understanding-rio","14":"tag-city-of-god","15":"tag-colonia-juliano-moreira","16":"tag-consequences-of-eviction-health","17":"tag-debt","18":"tag-exclusion","19":"tag-forced-evictions","20":"tag-lives-cannot-be-replaced-in-public-housing","21":"tag-minha-casa-minha-vida","22":"tag-parque-carioca","23":"tag-poor-quality-replacement-housing","24":"tag-public-housing","25":"tag-public-private-partnership","26":"tag-real-estate","27":"tag-real-estate-speculation","28":"tag-reference","29":"tag-segregation","30":"tag-vila-autodromo","31":"tag-west-zone","32":"writer-adele-smith","33":"translator-alix-vadot"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32468","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\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32468"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=32468"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=32468"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=32468"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=32468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}