By: Socorro Leite, National Director, Habitat Brazil
Date: August 5th 2016
Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation
This year, Brazil is hosting the world’s biggest sports event – the Summer Olympic Games. While athletes arrive in Rio to compete for medals and global audiences prepare to watch the games, two questions are on the mind of Rio de Janeiro's residents:
Where will the families evicted from where the Olympic City was built live? And will the infrastructure built for the event become ghost towns that are abandoned and decay over time?
Rio is one of Brazil’s most expensive cities. The favelas, where a small house can cost close to US$40,000, that surround the city have been there for more than 60 years. Families have built their lives and homes there for generations. But, that all changed when the Olympic facilities were built. Families were forcibly evicted and had to go through the emotional, physical and financial trauma that comes along with having to move at short notice. Whole communities disappeared.
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Photo source: Rob via Flickr/Creative Commons (CC By-NC-ND 2.0). Photo: © Rob