{"id":35690,"date":"2017-04-04T12:09:15","date_gmt":"2017-04-04T15:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=35690"},"modified":"2020-08-07T14:03:34","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T17:03:34","slug":"residents-evicted-by-the-2016-olympic-park-fight-for-just-compensation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=35690","title":{"rendered":"Residents Evicted by the 2016 Olympic Park Fight for Just Compensation"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

For the original article by Mariah Queiroz<\/a>\u00a0in Portuguese published by Ag\u00eancia\u00a0P\u00fablica\u00a0click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Families evicted to make room for\u00a0the now-abandoned Olympic Park have gone to court for reparations;\u00a0data obtained through freedom of information legislation shows\u00a0unequal treatment at the hands of the Eduardo Paes government<\/a><\/h3>\n

News that the Olympic<\/a> Park arenas\u00a0are now abandoned has not brought any sense of comfort to former residents of the favela of\u00a0Vila Aut\u00f3dromo<\/a> such as Luciana Souza da Silva. All that remains in the region that used to be home to more than 500 families in a privileged location next to the Jacarepagu\u00e1 Lagoon, where Vila Aut\u00f3dromo once stood, are empty lots, poorly used and deteriorating rapidly. Just 20 families managed to stay<\/a> living on a small parcel\u00a0of the land once occupied by the community, in Barra da Tijuca<\/a> in Rio\u2019s West Zone<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Outraged, Luciana and her husband Anderson Justino went to court along with 109 other families in the latter half of 2016 to ask for a fairer compensation package, given their lack of choice over their removal and the consequent loss of their house, which\u00a0they had to leave on the eve of the\u00a0Olympics<\/a> last year.<\/span><\/p>\n

The couple lived with their 12 children in a house with a living room, kitchen, two bedrooms, bathroom, yard and rooftop space on which they\u2019d planned to build another story. Their departure from Vila Aut\u00f3dromo was chaotic. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have much choice, the neighboring houses were being knocked down, the walls of our house started to split and sewage was coming into our house,\u201d Luciana remembers. The final\u00a0straw was when an employee from the Sub-Mayor’s office<\/a> threatened to call Child Protective Services due to the unsanitary conditions the children were living in following the demolition of the\u00a0neighbors\u2019 houses. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to leave, but I was very scared of losing my children, so we agreed to go,\u201d she laments.<\/span><\/p>\n

The only housing option the couple were given was an apartment in the Parque Carioca<\/a> housing complex, built as part of the Minha Casa Minha Vida<\/a>\u00a0federal housing program. They moved into the three-bedroom apartment in May 2016. Since then they have been struggling to cope<\/a> with the high cost of electric\u00a0and gas bills. Furthermore, \u201cthe apartment itself was poorly made: the flooring has come unstuck more than once, the toilet is wobbly and the shower is already broken<\/a>,\u201d Luciana adds. <\/span><\/p>\n

Represented by attorney F\u00e1bio Correa Guedes, 110 families are claiming compensation from the Rio de Janeiro City government, the RioMais Consortium (formed by the construction companies Odebrecht, Andrade Gutierrez and Carvalho Hosken) that was responsible for building Parque Carioca<\/a>, and the federal housing bank Caixa Econ\u00f4mica Federal. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re fighting for the right to choose,\u00a0that they were denied at the time. When the proposal for Parque Carioca was made, ex-mayor Eduardo Paes guaranteed that the apartments would be delivered furnished<\/a>, and they believed him. This promise was not kept. Now we want them to have the right to negotiate compensation, administratively or judicially,\u201d Guedes\u00a0explains. In addition,\u00a0according to the\u00a0claims in the complaint<\/a>,\u00a0\u201cthe residents that opted to stay in Vila Aut\u00f3dromo will have obtained better deals from the City and this goes against the principle of equality before the law.\u201d The families are requesting\u00a0moral damages\u00a0valued at R$100,000.<\/span><\/p>\n

The complaints are numerous, but two of them have particularly motivated the evicted families to act: the lack of documentation proving their property ownership\u00a0[in Parque Carioca]\u2013to this day they have not received titles\u00a0in their names\u2013and the feeling of having been harmed\u00a0by the City. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe City\u00a0could not have promised families apartments with immediate access to titles. The former residents of Vila Aut\u00f3dromo were also not informed that they would have to stay in the property for ten years to achieve full ownership. They were not given access to the contract,\u00a0they only received a promise that the City would provide\u00a0ownership documents. We\u2019re also claiming moral damages caused by the government, since these residents were conned,\u201d says Guedes. <\/span><\/p>\n

Neither the City nor Caixa have declared the value of the apartments in Parque Carioca. The only value mentioned so far was given by former mayor Eduardo Paes in a meeting in the Riocentro<\/a>\u00a0convention center, based on the government\u2019s own evaluations.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe former mayor said that the market value of a two-bedroom apartment was R$285,000 and the three-bedroom one was worth R$400,000, and the residents who agreed to move there were motivated by these figures. It would be only fair for them to receive this value so that they can have their right to choose, either to sell their apartments or remain living in Parque Carioca,\u201d Guedes\u00a0explains.<\/span><\/p>\n

How it all started<\/b><\/h3>\n

The eviction<\/a> negotiations got underway precisely at Riocentro on October 7, 2013.<\/span><\/p>\n

On that day<\/a>, then-mayor Eduardo Paes held a meeting to present the Parque Carioca housing complex, where hundreds of families were to be relocated to, around two kilometers away from Vila Aut\u00f3dromo. Located next to a beautiful mountain, the residential complex would have a swimming pool and waterslide, as well as a park for children and a green area.<\/span><\/p>\n

Paes took advantage of the occasion to offer a mea culpa<\/em><\/a>:\u00a0\u201cIt was the end of 2009, we won [the competition to host] the Olympics, and the first thing I should have done was to come here, dialogue with the residents, speak to people, and we could have explained what was going on. And the truth is that I didn\u2019t do this. That was my biggest mistake.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

He promised that from then on dialogue would be ongoing. Then he added the following: \u201cIf your property is worth more than the one we\u2019re offering you, then the individual can choose, they can say if they would prefer to receive compensation because their property is worth more.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But the reality is that the following years were very different to what was promised. Less than 5% of the families managed to stay living on their land, despite ownership granted by a Real Use Concession in the early 1990s by ex-governor Leonel Brizola<\/a> and renewed in 1998 by ex-governor Marcello Alencar, valid for\u00a099 years, with the right to renew\u00a0for another 99 years. The other 95%\u00a0received compensations, which were\u00a0not always just. But which were always\u00a0unequal.<\/span><\/p>\n

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During the removal of Vila Aut\u00f3dromo, ruins were left behind (AF Rodrigues\/Ag\u00eancia P\u00fablica)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Through freedom of information legislation (Lei de Acesso \u00e0 Informa\u00e7\u00e3o),\u00a0P\u00fablica<\/em> obtained tables with the values of all compensations paid by the City to Vila Aut\u00f3dromo residents. The values are absolutely\u00a0disparate: while the lowest compensation given was R$18,200, the highest was R$3.4 million<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But this is only one of the problems: the amount spent on removals by the Paes administration was 15 times higher than the estimated cost of upgrading\u00a0the area and allowing the residents to stay<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span>Furthermore, 89% of the money spent on removal, around R$195 million, came from a municipal\u00a0secretariat\u00a0whose sole\u00a0function was to deal with the Vila Aut\u00f3dromo removals cost, the Special Secretariat for Concessions\u00a0and Public-Private Partnerships<\/a> (SECPAR)–in general, eviction costs should be paid by the Municipal Housing Secretariat (SMH<\/a>). The tremendous amount spent on the Vila Aut\u00f3dromo removals did not figure in the accounts<\/a> of the Olympics expenditure by Paes\u2019 administration.<\/span><\/p>\n

Each head, a different sentence<\/b><\/h3>\n

Instead of compensating in a transparent way, taking into account the value of the land<\/a> in Vila Aut\u00f3dromo\u2013which was quite high since the Barra da Tijuca area was going through a period of rapid expansion<\/a>, with property being sold for R$10,000 per square meter\u2013government representatives did separate negotiations with each family<\/a> (sometimes, with different members of the same family), changing the offers and increasing the pressure<\/a> as the Olympics drew closer.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the beginning, the government aimed to divide and conquer<\/a>, segregating the community and pitting residents against each other, in order to achieve the objective of total removal,\u201d remembers Maria da Penha de Macena<\/a>, one of the community leaders who resisted eviction. <\/span><\/p>\n

Over the period of evictions, which lasted from March 2014 to August 2016, life in the area became a \u201creal hell,\u201d she says. Among the tactics used by the City were visits by disguised government representatives, using made-up pretexts to measure and photograph the houses and interview residents<\/a>; repression by the municipal guards<\/a>; demolitions of houses that had already been negotiated<\/a>, leaving the community in tatters and full of rubbish, cockroaches and rats. (Learn more in P\u00fablica<\/em>‘s\u00a0special article<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n

The initial offer made to residents was an apartment in Parque Carioca, or monetary compensation. But Maria da Penha remembers that the City changed its strategy for residents considered to be \u201cdifficult:\u201d \u201cThey asked us \u2018What\u2019s the value of your house?\u2019 If the person said R$700,000, they would offer R$580,000; to that the person would respond that they would only accept R$700,000 and would go to the Barra da Tijuca government office<\/a> to make a deal.\u201d In the government office there was a team that was there exclusively to deal with the community; some people ended up going there more than 20 times to negotiate. <\/span><\/p>\n

The story of nanny Maria da Concei\u00e7\u00e3o Queiroz shows how the values offered changed over time. She recounts that she arrived in Vila Aut\u00f3dromo back in the 1990s, straight from Maranh\u00e3o in northeastern Brazil, to help out her sister, who was going through a high-risk pregnancy. She ended up getting a taste for the area and for the people living there and decided to stay in a small apartment, where she lived for three years. She then met her husband and they saved money together\u2013around R$15,000\u2013to buy a house that was still under construction. \u201cIt was the place where I was happiest in my life, living in my house, which we worked hard to build,\u201d she says. They lived there for more than 12 years. <\/span><\/p>\n

Her name was on the list of the 20 families that were going to stay living in the community post-Olympics. But as the event drew closer, the municipal government stepped up the pressure and doubled the compensation offer. Queiroz\u00a0says that Barra da Tijuca sub-major Alex Costa<\/a> offered her R$200,000 and her husband R$200,000 too, as well as an apartment for each of them. Even so, she wanted to stay in Vila Aut\u00f3dromo. This caused family arguments and a marriage crisis. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never liked this apartment<\/a> [in Parque Carioca], here you can\u2019t grow a plant or have a pet<\/a>. In Vila Aut\u00f3dromo we would get home from work and put a chair out on the side of the road, see what was cooking over at the neighbor\u2019s house, have parties on the weekends, and at Christmas everyone would get together. There\u2019s no other place in Rio like Vila Aut\u00f3dromo,\u201d she says sadly. She and her husband moved out on March 23, 2015 and they received, as well as the two apartments, R$300,000 and R$400,000 respectively, paid in checks from the Caixa Econ\u00f4mica Federal bank, where they opened accounts and had access to a savings card. <\/span><\/p>\n

Researcher Eugenia Motta, post-doc at Institute of Social and Political Studies at the State University of Rio de Janeiro\u00a0(IESP\/UERJ) universities and researcher\u00a0at the\u00a0Research Nucleus in Culture and Economy\u00a0(NuCEC<\/a>), explains that the decrees that governed the Vila Aut\u00f3dromo removals determined that eviction could only take place with the agreement of the resident. \u201cThere\u2019s a whole political game based around the residents\u2019 resistance. The government makes a threat, saying that if you make a deal later it will be a worse one, as there won\u2019t be money left [to pay compensation]. On the other hand, the residents know that if they close a deal quickly they\u2019ll end up being offered less money. The decrees themselves guarantee a margin, in some cases up to 80% higher than the value negotiated with residents, in order for the government and local actors to complete the negotiation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Maria da Concei\u00e7\u00e3o\u2013a nanny\u2013and her husband left Vila Aut\u00f3dromo in March 2015. In exchange for leaving their house, they received money and two apartments in Parque Carioca from the government (Reprodu\u00e7\u00e3o\/Ag\u00eancia P\u00fablica)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The kick-off to negotiations took place\u00a0upon taking the measurement\u00a0[of the\u00a0property in question] by the City’s technical team. Despite the measurement\u00a0process following technical criteria, as detailed in decrees <\/span>3.8197\/2013<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>4.0562\/2015<\/a>—<\/span>which established calculations based on the area of the property, the average value per square meter for the neighborhood, and other parameters–P\u00fablica<\/em> heard of many cases in which similar properties received very different amounts of compensation.<\/span><\/p>\n

This was the case for Maria Queiroz, Concei\u00e7\u00e3o\u2019s sister, along with four other families. Their houses, with practically identical dimensions, all had four bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, bathroom and yard. <\/span><\/p>\n

The families in the first three houses received apartments in Parque Carioca. The other families, who negotiated around three months later, received cash compensation as well as apartments. <\/span>\u201cThey left the other houses in ruins, but my sister stayed living in her house and ended up opening a restaurant serving food to people from the construction companies and the City, all while fighting to remain in Vila Aut\u00f3dromo. In the end she accepted the offer they made her,\u201d Concei\u00e7\u00e3o remembers. <\/span><\/p>\n

Distortions<\/b><\/h3>\n

The tables showing the compensation paid by Eduardo Paes\u2019 administration, to which\u00a0P\u00fablica<\/em> had access through the freedom of information legislation, show other distortions. <\/span><\/p>\n

Dividing the\u00a0payments into those made by the Municipal Housing Secretariat (SMH) and those by SECPAR, there is more than one case where the recipient is recorded as having received a property in compensation in one table and, in the other\u00a0table, a cash compensation.<\/span><\/p>\n

In other cases, there are names of people who\u00a0received different payments from both secretariats. The values are shocking too. Of a total of 376 former Vila Aut\u00f3dromo residents listed in the documents, 22 received less than R$40,000 in compensation, while 56 received more than R$1 million. The largest payment was R$3.395 million, according to the City’s table.<\/span><\/p>\n

The 10 highest and lowest compensations in Vila Aut\u00f3dromo:<\/em><\/p>\n