Olympic re-housing

Who benefits from the Olympics?

Not the people who get “moved on” and “relocated”. According to this report, 20 million people have been displaced over the last 20 years:

Seoul 1988: 720,000 people were forcibly evicted from their homes in preparation for the Olympic Games in 1988.

Barcelona 1992: housing became so unaffordable as a result of the Olympic Games that low income earners were forced to leave the city.

Atlanta 1996: 9,000 arrest citations were issued to homeless persons, mostly racial minorities, as part of an Olympics-inspired campaign to, quote, “clean the streets”, unquote. Additionally, some 30,000 persons were displaced in Atlanta by Olympics-related gentrification and development.

Athens 2004: hundreds of Roma residents were displaced under the pretext of Olympics-related preparations.

In the lead up to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, over 1.25 million people were displaced due to Olympics-related urban redevelopment.

Hard to argue that Rio’s favelas are a great place to bring up a family. But still.

Writing in 2008, John Hoberman suggested that we rethink the whole Olympic thing. He’s persuasive.