what's sensible for Detroit?

Here's a city with an eviction problem, a vacant building problem, and a squatter problem. According to the Detroit News, the city has more than 100,000 vacant homes. Yet as columnist Mitch Albom, of the Detroit Free Press, noted the other day, good families are getting evicted even though they're struggling to live by the rules. The question is: why can't the city government bring these things together. No more demolition and eviction. Instead, a guided program that will turn decent homes over the families willing to engage in serious sweat equity.

As the Detroit News article shows, people feel very mixed about squatting -- because some of the squatters aren't serious and aren't good neighbors. But if the city and community groups policed the program so that only squatters intent on rehabbing their new homes and becoming part of the neighborhood were involved, it could work to preserve the city. After all, the prior policy of demolishing everything that lay vacant for too long resulted in a city with blocks dominated by the devastation of vacant lots.

As Quincy Jones, head of the Osborn Neighborhood Alliance, put it, "We should look at it both ways: How do we embrace it and turn the negative into a positive? All these homes are sitting and it's an open invitation for squatters. It [squatting and thus reoccupying vacant houses] helps prevent homes from being stripped. It's become the elephant in the room. We should promote keeping up the house."

Over to you, City Hall.

struggles of Jo-berg's squatters

The Los Angeles Times offers a take on the perils faced by squatters in what the newspaper refers to as Johannesburg's "Mad Max downtown." Sadly, though, the paper seems to look at developers who buy derelict squatter-occupied properties as potential white knights, capable of revitalizing the central city. Rather, they are seeking to profit from the opportunity to purchase big buildings at fire-sale prices. Though no family should have to live in a 5 X 10 foot room with no electricity and no water, this good family will simply get pushed to worse and more precarious accomodations if they are evicted.

One owner, who the newspaper identifies as Mark, told the reporter that "he'll do everything by the book, including getting a court eviction order, but he's not planning any meetings with tenants. "We don't encourage that," he says brusquely. "They are welcome to apply to move back in when it's renovated," he adds, although many will probably not be able to pay a deposit and higher rents. He believes there's a pile of money to be made from Johannesburg's low-cost housing shortage, if you're brave enough."Still, he's not brave enough to actually visit the building he bought. Instead, he had a black friend go there to take pictures.

favela cable cars

Rio de Janeiro has opened a cable car line that makes 5 stops up the hill into the Complexo do Alemao collection of favelas in the city's Zona Norte. Dow Jones Newswires reports that the $134 million system can transport 3,000 people every hour (though this may not be the exact truth: each of the system's 152 cable cars would need to make two trips per hour at the full capacity of ten people to move 3,000 folks up and down the hill.) "We're already looking at an extension of the Alemao cable car, as well as putting cable cars into Rocinha and Mangueira," the head of the state-run company that built the system told the news service.

While it's great that the government is willing to make an investment in mass transit, the article doesn't report what residents must pay to use the cable car system, nor what its hours are, nor how many people were forced to move to make way for its installation.

who benefits?

With the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics two years later, it seems that authorities in Rio de Janeiro are following a well-worn path: remaking the city in ways that help the rich and hurt the poor. First on the list--a project called the Transcarioca--an express bus route that would link Barra da Tijuca, one of the city's toniest neighborhoods, with the international airport in the north. 

The Associated Press reports that 1,000 families have been moved to make way for the Transcarioca. All told, the government says, 3000 homes will be demolished, and these city residents will be relocated 40 or 50 miles away. Several favelas, like Vila Autodromo, have also been targeted for extinction, and The Rio Times reports that Amnesty International has concerns about human rights abuses. Theresa Williamson, of Catalytic Communities, a local watchdog group, told Rio Times that the city is violating its own rules, which require residents to be relocated within 7 kilometers of their existing homes.

“I don’t think the idea of having games here is to harm anyone,” an Olympic official told the AP. “Everything will be done with a very human touch.” But how human is it to put people out of their homes?

did arson destroy the shantytown?

The fire that roared through Garib Nagar on Friday, rendering slumdog millionaire star Rubina Ali and 750 of her neighbors homeless, may have been deliberately set, United News of India reports. The mostly-Muslim shantytown was adjacent to the Bandra train station along the Western Express Railway.

the opportunity tower

In Caracas, squatters have taken over an uncompleted office tower that was designed to have a helipad on the roof. The squatters first invaded the structure in 2007, and The New York Times reports that the 45-story building has over time become a vertical community, with stores scattered throughout the edifice.

A beauty salon operates on one floor. On another, an unlicensed dentist applies the brightly colored braces that are the rage in Caracas street fashion. Almost every floor has a small bodega. Julieth Tilano, 26, lives inside a small shop on the seventh floor with her husband and in-laws. They sell everything from plantains to Pepsi and Belmont cigarettes. Her husband, Humberto Hidalgo, 23, has a side business in which he charges children from the skyscraper 50 cents per half-hour to play PlayStation games on the four television sets in the family’s living room. “There’s opportunity in this tower,” said Mr. Hidalgo, who immigrated here last year from Valledupar, Colombia.

As the BBC has reported, the housing shortage is so severe in the Venezuelan capital that homeless families have taken over portions of the still operating Foreign Ministry building.

no explanation necessary...

...but I'll provide one anyway. I took a hiatus from posting as I finished a book manuscript (see my Stealth of Nations blog for more on that) and then dealt with the emptiness that followed having finished the manuscript. Instead of blogging, I spent my time repairing manual typewriters.

Squattercity will be on the march again in March.

France targets Roma

In recent weeks, the government of Nicolas Sarkozy has evicted more than 1,000 Roma residents from their encampments in France and deported them to Bulgaria and Romania. Now,the European Union has called France's recent crackdown on Gypsy communities "a disgrace," The Guardian reports.

This was a U-turn for the EU, which had previously been mum on the evictions. The reason for the about face? A leaked French document seeming to show that Sarkozy had ordered local authorities to target Roma residents.

"Three hundred camps or illegal settlements must be evacuated within three months; Roma camps are a priority," the memo says. "It is down to the préfect [state representative] in each department to begin a systematic dismantling of the illegal camps, particularly those of the Roma."
If this truly represents official French policy, it would be unconstitutional and a violation of EU rules that block ethnic discrimination in member countries.

In response, French officials have noted that twice as many Roma were deported in 2009 as have been sent out of the country so far in 2010. "Free movement in the European area doesn't mean free settlement," France's immigration minister, Eric Besson, added. "What has been forgotten is that each of the European countries is responsible for its own national citizens."

squatter TV in Buenos Aires

Residents of the Buenos Aires squatter community called Villa 31 have started a TV station, the Latin American Herald Tribune reports.

The new station is called Mundo Villa, and the article says it will offer original programming plus shows from three countries that many of the residents of Villa 31 hail from: Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru. "There are 25 guys in the neighborhood working to gather news, while journalism workshops are being given by students from different universities," said Mundo Villa TV director Victor Ramos.

The paper reports the station will be available to 1500 households--a number that seems suspiciously small given that a local cooperative claims the neighborhood's population is more than 120,000.

Ramos said his group would be meeting with the head of TV-Roc, the cable franchise that brings signal to Rocinha, most famous favela in Rio de Janeiro, to establish "a network of channels from Latin American slums."

When I was in Rocinha in 2001, TV-Roc did no original news programming. Perhaps that's changed. Does anyone know? Doew anyone know of other efforts by residents of squatter communities anywhere else in the world to produce news programs?

more Murambatsvina?

Another violent raid on a squatter community in Harare leaves 100 families homeless, the Zimbabwe Standard reports. Police burned scores of shacks, and arrested 55 people, though a department spokesman later denied any knowledge of the raid.

thousands of squatters In New Orleans

Three to six thousand New Orleans residents are living as squatters, a house-by-house survey of the crescent city has revealed. The Times-Picayune reports.

UNITY, a local non-profit, surveyed 55,000 derelict buildings on 500 blocks chosen at random throughout the city. Among its interesting findings, the proportion of squatters in New Orleans who are elderly is four times the national average for homeless people--11.3 percent in NOLA vs. 2.8 percent throughout the US. The article suggests that these older squatters stay out of the city's shelter system because they want to "avoid the hubbub of traditional homeless shelters, preferring to hole up in vacant homes in familiar areas."

This is totally understandable. How sad, then, that the solution UNITY proposes amounts to more of what the squatters fear: "increased funding for case workers, homeless shelters and mental health services, as well as more assistance for moderate and low-income homeowners still trying to repair their houses."

Why not a program that works with the squatters to empower them to join together to bring the houses where they are currently encamped up to code? The fact that one in ten of these squatters is over 62 doesn't mean these people don't have skills to help the city rebuild.

the slippery slope

The Liberian Daily Observer editorializes against squatters who live around Monrovia's Ducor Intercontinental Hotel and are resisting government efforts to evict them. The squatters recently demonstrated at the hotel, brandishing sticks and broken bottles as well as chanting slogans and holding placards, the newspaper reports.

The key to the paper's argument:

Those who are resisting government's efforts should know that it is government's responsibility to give and assure protection to its people. It is also government's obligation to seek enabling conditions for economic growth and development. Mamba Point and the Ducor area have long been set aside as prime areas for hotels, embassies and restaurants. Should it now abandon its plan for economic development to satisfy squatters and liars? ... No government worth its salt should surrender to cabal of stick-wielding humbugs. They must be made to see the wisdom of government's plans and what social and national benefits will accrue there from.

This is trickle-down economics at its worst. It's simply disingenuous to say that social benefits will result from luxury redevelopment of the area. There may be some small economic advantage for the nation (though the redevelopment effort is likely induced through government subsidies that negate any real contribution to the national or local treasury), but luxury development simply engenders more luxury development and eats up an inordinate amount of government services.

The history of the site demands more. The Ducor closed in 1989 due to instability and violence in the country. It was occupied by squatters for better than a decade, as were the areas around it. Fairness for those who were most battered by Liberia's 14-year-long civil war demands that the government seek out a middle ground. Perhaps the squatters can be given the tools to rebuild on an area near the hotel. Or the government can provide relocation housing near enough to the center of the city for the squatters to retain their jobs.

Summarily evicting people who have lived there for better than a decade is not a development policy. Expecting that people quietly accept their annihilation is inhumane.

let the dead bury the dead

How's this for life in South Africa's capital? A squatter community is using a slimy, algae-filled pond to wash their clothes, the Sowetan newspaper reports.

Jacob van Gardeneren, of Lawyers for Human Rights, said: "The surrounding neighbourhoods used typical excuses to justify their involvement in these evictions - such as that the informal settlement hosts criminals. The reality is that this informal settlement hosts their gardeners, domestic workers and construction workers, who are often paid so poorly they cannot afford to travel home every day."

The squatters are threatened with eviction because the land had been allocated for the expansion of a nearby cemetery. Thus the dead have more rights in life than the living.

pushing the poor to the fringes

That's the story in Cairo, as documented in this article from the Los Angeles Times. The city is creating a comprehensive development plan, one which residents fear means removal, not renewal.

As one former municipal official told the paper, "The best solution would be first to prevent the spreading of any further slums, then to develop the existing slums from the inside rather than tearing them down." Still, his words ring hollow too: preventing the spread of squatter encampments requires creating a vast supply of affordable housing--something that governments and developers have never shown the ability to do on the scale required.

But officials can, of course, seize land in the same squatter areas for their own purposes. The article ends with the vision of a luxurious new sports facility. But locals "couldn't use it. It was for the children of government and military employees. Membership required."

Thus inequities perpetuate themselves.

slum tourism

A take on the phenomenon, courtesy of a Kibera resident and Wesleyan student, in The New York Times.

I've always thought that the impulse to connect is laudable, but that most tours through squatter communities amount to little more than gawking and taking photos.

Of course, it's also true that very few charities and NGOs are transparent, either.

demolition derby in Delhi

The depressing truth: when a city wins the right to host a sporting event, the brutal evictions begin. The Guardian offers some ugly details from Delhi, site of the upcoming Commonwealth Games.

think like a squatter

As this New York Times article makes clear, many who were previously not squatters now are and will be for for the foreseeable future in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince.

And its not just residents like Ginette Lemazor and her family, who, the article notes, live "in a flimsy structure fashioned from plastic sheeting and salvaged wood. They have a bed — “Please, make yourself at home,” she said, pointing to it — and a chair." Schools are operating under tarps. Impromptu latrines are so full that people are invading half-wrecked houses to use their toilets. And one thought unites everyone: the government doesn't communicate (except to falsely promise supplies) and is doing nothing. Indeed, in a recent interview, President René Préval, rather than speaking about rebuilding, promised there would be more earthquakes.

There's hope, however, in the words and actions of this man:

"Jean-Claude Gouboth, 36, the leader of a small encampment on the grounds of an old villa, said he had ignored the president’s remarks “because the president ignores me.” Mr. Gouboth has already rebuilt his small convenience store with wood from inside his heavily damaged house. “You have to face the facts and recoup,” he said. “Nobody’s going to do anything for you."

This cup is empty

Sad to say, but former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan serves up nothing but platitudes in his recent Guardian column on the importance of the World Cup for Africa.

"The World Cup has the real potential to break down barriers and challenge stereotypes," Annan writes. "I sincerely hope that all of us will carry the spirit of the World Cup, that being part of a family of nations and peoples celebrating a common humanity, into our daily lives and works."

But nowhere does he mention the evictions and rip-offs that make a mockery of what he has written.

In three paragraphs, John Pilger catalogs some of the sordid details:

A new stadium near Nelspruit will host four World Cup matches over 10 days. Jimmy Mohlala, speaker of the local municipality, was gunned down in his home in January last year after whistle-blowing “irregularities” in the tenders. An entire school, which was in the way, has been removed into prefabricated, sweltering steel boxes on a desolate site with a road running through it. "When the World Cup is over," said the writer Ashwin Desai, "it will become obvious that these stadiums are going to be empty shells, that our money has been used for what is really a pyramid scheme."

A community of 20,000 people, the Joe Slovo Informal Settlement, is threatened with eviction from where they live near the main motorway between Cape Town and the city’s airport. They are deemed an “eyesore”. Street vendors will be arrested if they fail to comply with FIFA rules about trade and advertising and mention the words "World Cup", even "2010". FIFA will earn about two and quarter billion pounds from the TV rights, exceeding its income from the last two World Cups combined.

Incredibly, South Africa will get none of this. And this is country with up to 40 per cent unemployment, a male life expectancy of 49 and thousands of malnourished children. This truth about the "rainbow nation" is not what fans all over the world will see on their TV screens, although they may glimpse an unreported feature of modern South Africa, which is a vibrant, rolling resistance that has linked the World Cup to an economic apartheid that remains as divisive as ever. Indeed, another kind of World Cup for effective popular protest has long been won in the streets of South Africa’s townships.

Africans can be rightly excited about the Cup without a whitewash about the costs. I fear for the favelas of Brazil, which is set to host the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016.

UPDATE a few hours later:
Just came across this: the 27th of April is Freedom Day in South Africa. As in other years, the squatter organizing group Abahlali baseMjondolo will instead be celebrating 'Unfreedom Day.' As part of their declaration, they write:

Is this a free country when grassroots organizations that have done everything that is required in terms of the Gatherings Act to organise a march find that their march is banned by Mike Sutcliffe just because he has power to do what ever he wants? Is this a free country when the police service who are suppose to protect us shoot to us? Is this a free country when the ANC can just decide to 'disband' our movement? Is this a free country when women are not safe on the streets after dark? Is this a free country when our children are chased from the schools because we don't have money? Is this a free country the people that live in the informal settlements are being dumped in the ’Transit Areas‘ which are situated 37 KM away from the City? Is this a free country when street traders are driven from the cities? Is this a free country when the taxis that are majority owned by black people will not be allowed to operate in the city center and only government buses will be allowed to transport commuters in the city? For example in the City of Durban the Public Taxis will end at Warwick.

In forty five days the world will be enjoying the so called,”African World Cup”. The question is will the poor enjoy or benefit? The answer is No. Who will benefit? The same people who will be celebrating the freedom day on the 27 April. The poor are being denied the right to sell near the stadiums and forced to sell their things far, far away from the stadiums. The taxis operators are also in trouble. Who will buy there? How will poor people be transported? Has the BRT replaced the black led transport industry? Can we really say that anyone in Blikkiesdorp is free?

2nd update:
"Street traders at the Grand Parade in Cape Town have been told to leave the area from May 1 until the end of the Soccer World Cup because of Fifa by-laws that relate to host cities." That's 300 traders being evicted from the best location at the center of town. The Mail & Guardian has the depressing details.

favela demolition

"A total of eight shantytowns in the city of Rio de Janeiro will be torn down and some 4,000 families will be forced to abandon their homes," the Latin American Herald Tribune reports.

Rio's Mayor Eduardo Paes has announced that 2,000 homes will be built on the site of the former Frei Caneca Prison, which was torn down last month. But that, of course, is only half the number that will be needed to house the people being displaced in these evictions. The article says that the Rio state government will pay 400 reais ($230) a month to the families while the new dwellings are under construction.

forced evictions in Rio?

In the wake of mudslides that claimed more than 200 lives in the region, Rio de Janeiro mayor Eduardo Paes has signed a decree permitting the forced removal of residents in 158 "high-risk" areas, The Guardian reports. The newspaper notes that Paes also signaled that two favelas – Morro dos Prazeres, where 25 people died, and the Laboriaux neighborhood of Rocinha, where two were killed – would be permanently removed.

"We are not animals. We are human beings and we need the support of the town hall," Elisa Rosa Brandão, president of the Morro dos Prazeres residents association, told the news website G1. "This community has history and the families do not just want to leave."

Across the harbor in Niteroi, one resident of favela Morro da Bumba, which had been built on a former trash heap and was a scene of great tragedy after the rains, pointed out that forced evictions are no answer if replacement homes are not available. "I'm against violence but if the government doesn't help, what I am supposed to do? Go and sleep outside the town hall with my kids?"

While mudslides on the many hills in Brazil's former capital are normal occurrences, the threat of forced evictions is a putsch against these communities that house one in five city residents. The government needs, instead, to work with these neighborhoods to create solutions -- both short term, to house those who have lost their homes, and long term, to create proper drainage and sewers and construction standards so the communities are not at risk ever again. Otherwise, these kinds of tragedies will simply continue.