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Credit, Personal file
Family worker and father Jucelio Sousa Lima was evicted twice during the pandemic
On his way home from work on Wednesday night (7), the motorcyclist Jucelio de Sousa Lima, 39, wonders how he will pay his rent this month.
The place where he lives with his wife Michele, seven months pregnant, and their three children, in Diadema, is the family’s third home during the pandemic, but if they cannot get R $ 600 to pay the rent, they may not have somewhere to go. Come on.
Before the pandemic, Jucelio and his family lived in São Bernardo do Campo, in a rented apartment in Jardim Silvina. When the crisis generated by Covid-19 led the heads of families to reduce their salaries, it was impossible to pay the rent.
“Either we pay the bills or we buy food,” he tells BBC News Brazil.
The owner of the apartment asked for the property to be returned to him, and the family was left with nowhere to go. With what he was receiving – less than R $ 600 – and in the midst of the pandemic, Jucelio could not rent another place.
Desperate, he says, he asked the leaders of an occupation he had seen in Diadema during a motorcycle delivery if he could stay. The occupation of Jardim Ruyce, which was located in a vacant lot next to the Imigrantes highway, was carried out by several people who were unemployed by the pandemic.
“They set up a 9 meter by 5 meter space, but if we didn’t build a hut in a week, we would lose it,” he says.
Since he used a company motorcycle at work, Jucelio was able to sell his motorcycle, which he used to earn extra money by working after hours, so that he could build the shack and not leave his family homeless. The bicycle did not give much; Jucelio also had to borrow money from his brother and bosses to buy construction materials.
He built the hut himself and took its furniture to occupy it with the help of friends. I was hoping I could stay there for a while, at least until I could pay off my debts and buy a motorcycle again.
But in less than 35 days, Jucelio, Michele and their three children were evicted again, along with 179 other families, when the São Paulo state government and Ecovias obtained an order to remove the families from court.
Credit, Personal file
The Zero Evictions project fights against evictions during the covid-19 pandemic
Elderly, sick and homeless in the pandemic
The situation in Jucelio is not a rarity, explains Talita Gonzales, from the Zero Evictions campaign, a meeting of volunteers from various areas and social movements that fight at the national level so that families are not left homeless in the midst of the difficult situation it imposes. the covid-19 pandemic.
“We live, dozens of families, in the same situation: entering the occupation after being evicted and being evicted again,” he says.
A mapping by LabCidade, the urban planning laboratory of the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism (FAU) of USP, shows that the number of collective moves increased during the pandemic in the metropolitan region of São Paulo. Between April and June of this year, six moves led to 1,300 families becoming homeless, double the number of the previous quarter (January to March 2020). Between July and September, eight new collective moves were made, reaching 285 families.
Data from Secovi (the housing companies union) shows that half of residential and commercial tenants requested rent renegotiation during the pandemic: 54% in July and 50% in August. But many could not renegotiate and had to leave.
Data from the São Paulo Court of Justice indicate that there was an increase in lawsuits for rental contracts during the pandemic. In June, they were 1,290, an increase of 55.8% compared to May; the majority (89%) due to non-payment. The figure also includes commercial real estate processes. In July, the number increased further, to 1,600 cases.
This is an alarming fact, says urban planner Raquel Rolnik, a professor at FAU-USP and coordinator of LabCidade, which does not even include the informal evictions of people in more precarious situations who do not have formal contracts.
The situation led to several stressful confrontations with real estate companies, as in the case of retired Jorge Torres, a 79-year-old man with vascular dementia.
His daughter, designer Renata Tonezi, says that even during the pandemic she was paying her rent on time, but that the real estate agency forgot to renew her surety bond on time and wanted Jorge to take out 30-month insurance in the middle of the pandemic. – the contract ends in 12.
The realtor did not accept 12-month insurance or the alternatives offered by the family. Desperate for the possibility of an eviction, Renata ran to find a place for her father.
“He is not even able to understand what is happening, why he will have to leave the house, it is very sad,” he says. “I talk to him, but the next day he forgets,” explains Renata, who has taken turns with her brother to give her father medicine and food, who often forgets to eat because of the illness.
Credit, Personal file
Elderly and ill, Jorge was forced to leave home by the real estate agency in the middle of the pandemic
“He went home (in Cursino, in São Paulo) precisely because it is close to my mother and my brother’s house and it makes it easier for us to take care of him. Being forced to leave in the middle of the pandemic is a very big inconvenience for a sick person “. “says Renata.” We tried to solve it amicably, but there was no way. “
“It’s so unfair. I cried in anger today, because we never stop paying, we always take care of the house,” says Renata.
BBC News Brazil questioned the real estate agency about the case by email and by phone, but received no response.
Eviction epidemic
“At the LabCidade moving observatory we monitor cases of collective removals and, even with difficulties in obtaining data, we map many cases. If you consider individual and informal evictions, then it is a huge number, it is a real epidemic, ”he says. Rolnik.
“With the economic crisis and worsening unemployment, we were already seeing an increase in jobs. In the pandemic, this became even more widespread and many new occupations emerged, of people who lived paying rent in slums and can no longer pay, that is, they are evicted. favelas and end up in occupations, in an even more precarious situation, ”he says.
Credit, Rovena Rosa / Agência Brasil
‘Nobody is going to hang in a pyramid in a situation of vulnerability if they have alternatives,’ says Raquel Rolnik
Jucelio’s first eviction, when he had to leave the apartment in São Bernardo, is one of those cases that are not in the statistics, he could not pay, the owner asked for the apartment and he returned it, there was never a demand.
The eviction from the occupation, he says, was even more traumatic, because the neighbors had a court order that prevented the State from carrying out the eviction, so they thought they would not have to leave. But at the last minute, the government obtained a court order that reversed the court order.
“We didn’t know, there were people who went to work and left everything, lost everything. I managed to save the fridge, the TV and the washing machine, but we lost a dresser with all the baby clothes we had won, a wallet.” with part of the bike payment, various documents. It was horrible, they came with backhoes and they just left everything, ”says Jucelio.
Shortly after the removal, a fire in the occupation destroyed the belongings that were still in the rubble. Several people were injured and had to be taken to hospital, according to family reports.
At that time, Ecovias said in a note that it was communicated to the families 15 days before, but acknowledged that the date of recovery was not set. The justification would be the risk because the occupation is close to the highway. Neither the state government, which owns the land under the Ecovias concession, nor the municipality of Diadema, where the occupation was located, offered assistance to the families.
“The discussion of risk is very important, in fact there are areas where people are subject to risks like landslides and floods. But the problem when it comes to risk is that it has to be assessed individually, make a report, examine in another scale, not in bowls ”, says Raquel Rolnik, from FAU.
“Nobody is going to hang in a pyramid in a situation of vulnerability if they have alternatives. Today they look at risk areas and take people out, no one is taken care of, and many times people go to an even greater risk situation,” he says the urban planner.
Fortunately, Jucelio received help from an acquaintance to informally rent a house in Diadema and help from his three children’s teachers to buy food and clothing, but his situation remains totally insecure.
“I am paying the loans that I used to build, yesterday I received my salary and I had to pay everything to my boss, who had lent me. I mean, I didn’t get anything. I don’t know how I’ll do it. “he says, afraid of having to move again without knowing where.
But are pandemic evictions allowed?
The National Council of Justice (CNJ) issued a resolution warning the courts not to evict people in the pandemic, but it is only a guideline, not a rule, explains lawyer Lincoln Romão Leite, specialist in Real Estate Law from Neves, De Rosso e Fonseca Advogados. .
During the pandemic, Congress passed a law prohibiting evictions through preliminary decisions (preliminary and temporary, usually quickly rendered). The ban was vetoed by President Jair Bolsonaro, but came into effect when Congress overruled the veto, a few days after the removal of the Jucelio occupation by court order.
However, Romão Leite explains, normal eviction decisions, which are not issued as an injunction, remain valid.
Most cases, however, do not even go to court, such as Jorge Torres.
Her daughter Renata says that the real estate company did not even pass on the proposals for other forms of guarantee that the family offered to the property owner when they discovered that the company had forgotten to renew the surety bond.
“They wanted us to take out 30-month insurance and for the contract to end in a year,” he says. “We offer other guarantees, such as collateral or other insurance brokers who accept less months, but said that the owner did not agree. After talking to the owner, I discovered that they didn’t even present our proposal to him, ”says Renata.
“Imagine, insurance for 30 months would be much more expensive, we cannot afford it,” says Renata. “We didn’t even ask for a rent discount during the pandemic, we just wanted a friendly solution to the warranty problem,” he says.
“The real estate company is wanting to collect the fine for (closing) the contract, since they were the ones who removed my father,” says she, who tried to reach an agreement with the company without success. The real estate company Denmark Imóveis did not respond to the contacts made by BBC News Brazil about the case.
In the end, the only solution the family found was for the old man to move in with his ex-wife, Renata’s mother. “They had been separated for 15 years, but she was moved,” says the daughter.
“Being displaced is already a traumatic process and with very serious consequences in normal terms. In the pandemic the situation is even more serious ”, says Rolnik.
“We saw situations that he calls ‘permanent transience’, of people who have been expelled 8 times. And the main advice of the health authorities is ‘stay at home’. How can this measure be promoted if there are people who are being evicted? “
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