Squatters united against global gentrification

The city government does not evict anyone. The state government does. The municipal government in Brazil, does not control the police, the state government does. The state government, not José Serra, is evicting Prestes Maia. (And I'm not being partisan at all, as both governor and mayor are in the same party--let's just get the facts right) Serra hasn't evicted "thousands of people"--by law he has no eviction powers. And he won't be spending money to evict people, since, again, the police does it, and they're controlled by the state government.

What has happened is that, yes, Serra has said he wants to "revitalize" or "gentrify" the city center. I doubt rents have gone up in downtown, as there has been very little re-development so far, so the "thousands of low-income families" which should be evicted have not been evicted--yet.

Yes, the building was abandoned and has R$6 million in back taxes. The owner of the building, however, wants R$14 million to sell it to the city. This is obviously ridiculous, but property rights prevent the city from just "taking it"--it's the law (though a bad one, I think). So, if the city were to start a court action to take the building at estimated cost (Certainly less than R$14 million), it would take ages, and in the meantime the owner still has the option of evicting people. So why not pay the R$14 million? Well, imagining that the back taxes would be taken into consideration, the city would have to dish out R$8 million. If we divide those R$8 million by the 468 families, we get around R$17,000 per family, enough to build low-income housing outside of the city center. The state government currently builds 5-story apartment buildings for about R$7,000 per apartment. (According to the COHAB website of the city government) Are you honestly asking the government to buy Prestes Maia for R$8 million AND spend the money to make it habitable when you can build twice as many apartments anywhere else?

Personally, I think they will end up moving them to a structured government housing project. But that would also mean that they would probably be put on the top of the queue (or line) so they'd get their apartments immediately for obvious political reasons. In the meantime, people in shantytowns (favelas) for years wait for their apartments. Not fair, eh?

Let's step back and think that there is always more shades of gray to consider, and that no one (including me) has all the answers.

Ricardo

Source for COHAB figure:
 http://www2.prefeitura.sp.gov.br/empresas_autarquias/cohab/conjuntos_habitacionais/0001 Quote is R$10 million for 1,565 units.

hey,
sorry, I do think it needs to be made clear which paragraph and breaking news are refering to which squats in which country at the moment it is a bit confusing - is there also a Hackney in Brazil?
And if not why is it all so thrown together?

cheerio

No quotes from local residents, no quotes from protesters, no response allowed from the local authorities. What exactly are you basing your accusations on?

Hi AB, the first paragraph refers to London in the UK and has the word London mentioned twice. The paragraph is intended to serve as a link between property speculation and community struggles both in the UK and beyond, in this case, Brazil.

The second paragraph refers to Sao Paulo in Brazil. It contains the word Brazil in the first sentence and even goes as far as to spell out that Brazil is in South America. It continues to focus purely on the situation faces the Prestes Maia squat and doesn't mention any other squat of city again so it should be fairly clear what is what.

The breaking news supplies a link which explains which squat has been saved from immediate eviction and which demo is taking place tomorrow. Perhaps the breaking news should have been placed at the bottom of the text but it seemed appropriate to make the good news visible to those who may have already read the feature.

I am sure you know that the text for features is proposed to the imc-uk-features list and undergoes a 24 hour delay before publication during which time people are free to comment and collaborate with the process of putting together the best possible feature. Feel free to comment on and correct poor writing in such articles by taking part in the process on the features list. Comments to articles on indymedia are generally considered to be for commentary about the issues rather than a critique of the style of writing.

(this article appeared in the Guardian last month, along with the Hinud Times, Taipei Times and others.)

Brazil's roofless reclaim the cities

Support grows for urban coalition that takes over disused buildings for homeless and poor

Tom Phillips in Sao Paulo (Monday January 23, 2006)

Every day at 4am, 18-year-old Julienne Cunha wakes to fetch water for her family. She climbs from her bed in the poky, plywood shack she shares with six relatives and collects her bucket.
In the remote northern fishing village of Alcantara where she was born, it would be nothing out of the ordinary. But these days, Julienne lives on the 20th floor of a tower block in one of the wealthiest districts of Sao Paulo, the world's third largest city.

A resident of Prestes Maia, a colossal abandoned clothes factory that towers over central Sao Paulo, Julienne is one of the youngest members of Brazil's sem-teto or "roofless" movement - an urban coalition growing in cities across the country. Water doesn't reach Ms Cunha's part of Prestes Maia, so every day she treks down its spiralling staircase to collect it for relatives including her brother, sister and two-month-old son.
The roofless movement is the urban equivalent to Brazil's Movimento dos Sem Terra (MST) or Landless Movement, which has spearheaded the campaign for land reform since the 1980s. The MST defends Brazil's impoverished rural workers and reclaims unproductive land for the dispossessed. The Movimento de Sem-Teto do Centro, MSTC, on the other hand, reclaims buildings for the urban homeless and for low-income workers, many of whom work in the informal economy.

Eight years after its foundation, the MSTC is part of an ever growing coalition fighting for the rights of Brazil's urban poor, under the umbrella of the Frente de Luta por Moradia or Pro-housing Front.

Prestes Maia, Sao Paulo's biggest occupation with 22 storeys in total, is home to 468 families; around 3,000 people from all over South America cram into improvised shacks constructed in what was once office space.

Walking through Prestes Maia is like taking a road trip through Brazil. On every floor a different accent hangs in the air; the exaggerated vowels of the baianos, who swapped Salvador's favelas for the bustle of Sao Paulo; the staccato consonants of the pernambucanos who fled the arid backlands of Brazil's north-east in search of work; and, on the sixth floor the portunhol of Bolivian immigrants who flick between Spanish and Portuguese as they describe their fight for survival in the ocupacion.

"There are lots of people here with different cultures, different ways of life," explains 49-year-old Jomarina Abreu Pires da Fonseca, an MSTC coordinator, at her home on the 11th floor of Prestes Maia. "Someone has to try to keep order," she adds, grinning.

At first glance Prestes Maia, which sem-teto members occupied in 2002, resembles a chaotic, multi-storey shantytown; cardboard spews out of its cracked windows, graffiti litter its walls and children rattle through its wide corridors on bicycles. But the community is meticulously organised. Residents contribute R$20 (£5) a month to the upkeep of the building, and a rota system exists for cleaning each floor's communal bathroom. Ms Fonseca holds weekly meetings at which representatives from each floor discuss house rules, new arrivals and future occupations.

Sao Paulo, like many of Brazil's large urban centres, is a city crying out for housing reform. According to the UN it has 39,289 abandoned buildings. At the same time, says the Sao Paulo-based Social Network of Justice and Human Rights, there are an estimated 15,000 homeless people here with many thousands more unable to afford decent housing outside the city's favelas, where around 2 million are thought to live.

Before becoming president, Luiz Inacio da Silva of the Workers party promised this would all change. Now, three years on and mired in an ongoing corruption scandal, Mr da Silva is coming under fire for backtracking on his promises to Brazil's social movements. Although Workers party propaganda still adorns many of Prestes Maia's plaster walls, anger is growing that the "shoeshine president" has not done more to help the country's poor.

"We are petistas [supporters of the Workers party], but we have to say that he has done nothing for the social movements. We've tried to put pressure on him but what we hoped for hasn't happened," says Ms Fonseca, as two delivery men haul the occupation's latest acquisition - a new washing machine - up the last of 10 flights of crumbling stairs.

Another critic is Ivone Maria Santana de Souza, a 45-year-old immigrant from a shantytown in the north-eastern city of Olinda, who lives on the squat's 19th floor. Along with her daughter and four grandchildren, Ms de Souza spends her days separating tiny plastic hangers for a sock company. She receives 80 centavos (20p) for every kilo of hangers and the family survive off the monthly income of about R$500.

"If we could find work [in the north-east] we'd never have come here in the first place," she says, dressed in a white nightdress bearing the words "life is good" in English. "The money situation is horrible. If you work in the centre where do they expect you to live?" she asks. "What do they expect you to do?"

The area's housing secretary, Orlando Almeida, told a magazine recently that the centre's poor should be relocated from inner-city tenements to the city's outskirts. A new project to revitalise parts of central Sao Paulo, including one neighbourhood known as Cracolandia (Crackland), aims to redevelop the area almost exclusively for the middle and upper class. Human rights groups say the plans will marginalise further Sao Paulo's ever-growing underclass.

Looking out from her 11th floor window at the skyscrapers across the horizon Ms Fonseca talks of the sem-teto's plans to carry out a wave of occupations across Sao Paulo in the coming months. "But our fight isn't just for housing," she says. "It's for healthcare, old people's rights, employment, leisure and schooling. People don't know their rights. And our fight is to make sure they do."

Ricardo probably won't see this as his comment is a cut and paste spam that he has posted all over the net, but I'll address his points anyway...

> The city government does not evict anyone. The state government does.

That's just being pedantic. The state government opperates through the city government and is informed by city officials. While the state government might hold the power it executes it through the local authorities.

> The municipal government in Brazil, does not control the police, the state government does.

Of course... so you are saying that it is central government officials located hundreds of miles away in Brazilia that meet with Sao Paulo police to plan and authorise actions?

> Serra hasn't evicted "thousands of people"--by law he has no eviction powers. And he won't be spending
> money to evict people, since, again, the police does it, and they're controlled by the state government.

That is a pointless argument. Government money is public money from taxes. That money is allocated by central government to local government (either directly or through permission to collect local taxes). Local officials then spend it. The police are funded by public money. The mayor has redevelopment plans for downtown Sao Paulo and that means his pal Hamuche is set to benefit from the increased value of Prestes Maia and thanks to the descion of the courts to hand possesion over to Hamuche, the police get to use publi money to kick people out onto the streets. So what exactly are you denying?

> there has been very little re-development so far, so the "thousands of low-income families" which
> should be evicted have not been evicted--yet.

Exactly, "yet". His plans will result in massive displacement since the redevelopment plans are certainly not aimed at benefiting the poor who currently reside in the 40,000 abandoned and squatted buildings of central Sao Paulo. Again I have to ask, what exactly are you disputing?

> Yes, the building was abandoned and has R$6 million in back taxes....
> property rights prevent the city from just "taking it"--it's the law

Not true apparently and besides, the guy does even have the deeds to this building!

> The state government currently builds 5-story apartment buildings for about R$7,000 per apartment.
> Are you honestly asking the government to buy Prestes Maia for R$8 million AND spend the money
> to make it habitable when you can build twice as many apartments anywhere else?

This is misleading. The choice isn't between giving the residents new appartments or buying the building. Neither option has been on offer. The position is (or was until a couple of days ago) simply that the residents would be evicted onto the streets with no provision for rehousing and the 'owner' get his building back.

Now there has been money offered to some people in order to encourgae people to leave and to split the unity of the residents, but rehousing hasn't been on the cards. Further mo
re, the low cost housing you speak of is rented housing on the outskirts of the city, not much use to people who are sratching a meger income in the city centre.

Personally I think the government should leave them be and nationalise the property. Further more, if they refuse to do that, the owner should pick up the full cost of eviction, not the public.

> I think they will end up moving them to a structured government housing project.
> But that would also mean that they would probably be put on the top of the queue (or line)
> In the meantime, people in shantytowns (favelas) for years wait for their apartments. Not fair, eh?

The favelas are not being evicted in this case, the Prestes Maia residents are. Prestes Maia is effectively an indoor favelas and if these people are to be evicted they should be rehoused. That is fair!

Sarah wrote "What exactly are you basing your accusations on?"

What accusation are you talking about?

"No quotes from local residents"

The article is made up from translations of a statement from the residents of Prestes Maia and the links provided take you to orginal sources.

"No quotes from protesters"

Which protesters? The ones in London? At the time of writing, the solidarity demo hadn't taken place so it would have been difficult to quote anyone. If however you mean the protesters in Sao Paulo then again, the article is taken from the residents and their supporters.

"No response allowed from the local authorities. "

Hows that? Indymedia is an open publishing site and there is no provision to lock-out or exclude local authorities from responding.

So, what's your problem?

Okay, "n". My comment's not spam--i posted it to the Indymedia.org website, the indymedia.org.uk website and my website--just because they referenced the same article. hardly "all-over-the-net".

Here are some point-by-point replies to your replies...

>> The city government does not evict anyone. The state government does.

>That's just being pedantic. The state government opperates through the city government and is informed by city officials. While the state government might hold the power it executes it through the local authorities.

Oh no, I mean literally the state of São Paulo. Not "the state" as in the government in general. The state government can't "operate through the city government". That's not the way it works--mayors are elected in Brazil, not appointed, as are city councilmen. I'm not trying to nitpick or be semantical about it--it's literally that people are blaming the city for the eviction when the state's government is the one responsible.

>> The municipal government in Brazil, does not control the police, the state government does.

>Of course... so you are saying that it is central government officials located hundreds of miles away in Brazilia that meet with Sao Paulo police to plan and authorise actions?

No, actually they're in the same town (about 4 miles apart from downtown to the Morumbi neighborhood). Again, city government vs. state government vs. federal government. There's no "authorizing"--it's not an executive decision, but a judicial one (so it's actually a ruling). Hamuche entered with a "reposession" action in the state of São Paulo's court, the court granted it and the state police is forced to carry it out. The state executive branch (the governor, Geraldo Alckmin) has nothing to do with it--much less the city government.


>> Serra hasn't evicted "thousands of people"--by law he has no eviction powers. And he won't be spending
>> money to evict people, since, again, the police does it, and they're controlled by the state government.

>That is a pointless argument. Government money is public money from taxes. That money is >allocated by central government to local government (either directly or through permission to >collect local taxes). Local officials then spend it. The police are funded by public money. The >mayor has redevelopment plans for downtown Sao Paulo and that means his pal Hamuche is set >to benefit from the increased value of Prestes Maia and thanks to the descion of the courts to >hand possesion over to Hamuche, the police get to use publi money to kick people out onto the >streets. So what exactly are you denying?

I'm denying that he's "made his mission to (sic) expel thousands of families", which is not his mission, but perhaps a consequence of it (something which remains to be seen). And again, he won't be be spending money, the state government will because they control the police--and even then it's because the courts order them to, not the governor.

Btw, they're not "pals". They're from different parties (Hamuche is a former city councilman), and I know Serra's party doesn't think too highly of Hamuche's party, so if they're "pals" at the "country club" I'd be shocked. It's that kind of idle comment, with no basis on fact, which made me write my reply to the article. But we'll get to that later.


>> there has been very little re-development so far, so the "thousands of low-income families" which
>> should be evicted have not been evicted--yet.

>Exactly, "yet". His plans will result in massive displacement since the redevelopment plans are >certainly not aimed at benefiting the poor who currently reside in the 40,000 abandoned and >squatted buildings of central Sao Paulo. Again I have to ask, what exactly are you disputing?

40,000 squatted buildings? Seriously? I hope that's a hyperbole. You meant residents, right? My point in this is that the Prestes Maia eviction situation is the first one. Probably won't be the last, but again coming back to the point that Serra hasn't evicted thousands of people and that real estate values haven't gone up yet.

>> Yes, the building was abandoned and has R$6 million in back taxes....
>> property rights prevent the city from just "taking it"--it's the law

>Not true apparently and besides, the guy does even have the deeds to this building!

Actually it is true. Look up the articles 1.228 of the Brazilian constitution, 2.030 and 4.132 of the Brazilian Civil Code. Not only does it require a minimum occupation of 5 years of the premises (they've only been there for 4--that's why Hamuche's doing this now as opposed to later), but it also requires a bunch of other legal stuff (like what kind of improvements you've made to the property, value assesment, etc). It sucks, and like I said, it's a bad law--but law nonetheless. Talk to anybody at the MST and they'll tell you how long it takes for a government to legally take a non-productive farm or abandoned building for public use. In fact, that's one of their arguments for invading public property--that the judicial system is too slow. And whether or not the guy has the deed to the building is a moot argument, as by law no reposession can be carried out without the owner showing that he is in fact the owner through either showing a deed or finding its registry in the local notary.

>> The state government currently builds 5-story apartment buildings for about R$7,000 per apartment.
>> Are you honestly asking the government to buy Prestes Maia for R$8 million AND spend the money
>> to make it habitable when you can build twice as many apartments anywhere else?

>This is misleading. The choice isn't between giving the residents new appartments or buying the >building. Neither option has been on offer. The position is (or was until a couple of days ago) >simply that the residents would be evicted onto the streets with no provision for rehousing and the >'owner' get his building back.

>Now there has been money offered to some people in order to encourgae people to leave and to >split the unity of the residents, but rehousing hasn't been on the cards. Further mo
>re, the low cost housing you speak of is rented housing on the outskirts of the city, not much use >to people who are sratching a meger income in the city centre.

>Personally I think the government should leave them be and nationalise the property. Further >more, if they refuse to do that, the owner should pick up the full cost of eviction, not the public.

Actually it has. Read the Prestes Maia blog ( http://ocupacaoprestesmaia.zip.net/) and you'll see that the suspension of reposession was coupled with an attempt by the mayor José Serra to find alternative housing for the inhabitants, while some councilmen wanted the building itself to serve as housing. And it's not rented housing, but subsidized housing. They're not renting it--they'd own it, but it's not free either--but aimed at people earning the minimum wage. We'll see what happens there. But this is one of those little "pieces" that shows that the municipal government isn't just sitting on its ass. While you may not agree with their proposed solution, it's not like Serra's being totally oblivious to the situation.

And you can't "nationalise" property or make the owner pick up the costs of eviction. There are property rights in Brazil as there are in most countries. There's no "absolute" right to property and it can be appropriated for public use, but there are requirements for that (as I've previously stated). Now if you want to debate what those requirements should be, great--I think they need to be lowered too--but the government has to follow law otherwise it has no legitimacy. And if you don't like the laws, well then campaign to change them, not for the government to break them.

>> I think they will end up moving them to a structured government housing project.
>> But that would also mean that they would probably be put on the top of the queue (or line)
>> In the meantime, people in shantytowns (favelas) for years wait for their apartments. Not fair, eh?

>The favelas are not being evicted in this case, the Prestes Maia residents are. Prestes Maia is >effectively an indoor favelas and if these people are to be evicted they should be rehoused. That is >fair!

I agree with your point, but even if we consider Prestes Maia as a favela, it would mean that they would have preferential treatment over people in other favelas. I don't think that's fair, especially considering that favelas usually are squatters as well until the land is appropriated for the inhabitants, which is not always. I understand they're being evicted, but that is a risk they took when they chose the building--as did most favela inhabitants. Just because the owner of Prestes Maia wants it back and the "favelados" invaded what is mostly public property is not a reason for them to "cut in line". But to think otherwise is a perfectly valid opinion, I agree.

>n

Finally, I just want to say that I'm not trying to defend any party here. My biggest argument with this situation is how it's being presented at indymedia: innacurately, biased and with no objectivity. If you want people to support your cause, then don't hold back facts, don't go by any one person's opinion--make your case considering all the facts. I honestly support the Prestes Maia squatters, but the indymedia article certainly didn't help me think that this is a rational campaign, but rather a sensationalist biased view of the situation.

Ricardo do not make false polemics. the imc-uk expose the problem(the eviction of prestes maia), with you want to more information about it, goes to indymedia brazil and you see all details.
17/02/2006 - The evictation of Prestes Maia Ocupation was postponed(in portuguese)
 http://www.brasil.indymedia.org/pt/blue/2006/02/345772.shtml