Hundreds of families in Rio de Janeiro who say they are being forced from their homes because of construction related to the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics have filed suit against the city, court officials told AFP Tuesday. Residents of the neighbourhoods west of the city said municipal officials offered them insufficient money to compensate them for their homes, which are to be razed to make way for the athletic facilities ahead of the games.
Some inhabitants of several neighbourhoods in the path of the planned construction said they have been offered alternative housing in apartments far smaller and farther from work than their existing homes. "They are proposing that I give my house to the city for a next to nothing, in exchange for a smaller apartment that's further away," said Jose Jorge Santos de Oliveira, 51, who has lived in his current dwelling for some 16 years.
"If I don't take it, they are offering to compensate me some 8,700 reales - not enough money to buy another house," he said, adding that in his view the market price of his house is about 50,000 reales, roughly 32,000 dollars.
Brazil is eager to put its best foot forward, and to show off its growing role on the world stage, as it prepares to host football's 2014 World Cup and the to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. Rio authorities, meanwhile, defended the amount of money offered to the residents and said that of 629 families affected by the construction, 129 have already agreed to leave under the compensation terms offered.
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