Popular movements resumed their occupation to shelter families affected by the floods in Rio Grande do Sul

Brasil de Fato

As a result of the floods in May, the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul has, so far, 580,111 displaced people, and 39,595 are living in shelters, according to the Civil Defense. Faced with the calamity thousands of families are coping with, the National Movement for the Struggle for Housing (MNLM, in Portuguese) has revived the Ocupação Reexistência (Re-existence Occupation, in a rough translation) in the former Cia. De Arte building. On Friday (31), the movement cleaned up the site, located in the city’s Historic Center.

“I was affected by floods in 2024. I also lost my house in 2023 due to the cyclone. On that occasion, the government offered vouchers and spaces meant to accommodate a lot of people at once, like hostels and other places. And yet we have countless empty properties, like in the downtown and rich neighborhoods of Porto Alegre,” says Deivid Soares.

According to the Observatory of the Metropolis and the 2022 Brazilian Census, of 686,414 permanent private homes in 2022 in the capital city of Rio Grande do Sul, 558,151 were occupied, 101,013 were vacant, and 27,250 were for occasional use. As the MNLM points out, public buildings should be available to house families until decent housing alternatives are guaranteed. “We don’t want a ‘temporary city’, we want the social function of public buildings to be effective at this time.”

In an interview with the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo on May 15, Mayor Sebastião Melo (Brazilian Democratic Movement) said there were no properties available at the moment to house so many homeless people.

Occupy and resist

“We see people planning to put up temporary cities that we know aren’t going to be temporary. Since 2018, public policy for housing in our state – not just in Porto Alegre – has been precarious. Due to the construction of the Arena [soccer stadium] and the airport, people have been moved farther away, to neighborhoods such as Sarandi and Humaitá. The government simply removed them. The way we can claim and have our own space is by occupying, resisting and fighting,” says Deivid.

Deivid Soares was displaced by the floods / Photo: Jorge Leão

The occupation was reborn in the nine-story building that originally belonged to Caixa Econômica Federal, one of Brazil’s state-owned banks. In 1997, it became a cultural center managed by Companhia de Arte until 2021. The following year, it was included on the list of 92 properties owned by Porto Alegre’s city hall that can be sold, either by barter, assignment or partnership.

“This building was on the auction list of public properties, a building given by Caixa to city hall for the construction of a cultural space. It was home to the Companhia de Arte, and each of the floors housed important cultural projects for the city. During the pandemic, it was closed and emptied, with the promise that it would be renovated and cultural projects would take place there again. Instead, it was put up for sale,” says Ceniriani Vargas da Silva, the state coordinator of the National Movement for the Struggle for Housing.

“We are a movement with 34 years of experience in the struggle for housing. We know that the solutions being presented are not immediate, they are not quick”, / Photo: Jorge Leão

Uninhabited since then, the building was occupied in September last year. On that occasion, hours after the occupation, Porto Alegre’s Municipal Civil Guard violently repressed the occupation’s supporters. On October 23, Mayor Sebastião Melo signed decree 22.269/2023 declaring the property of social interest.

“For the second time, the movement has occupied this property in solidarity with the families affected by the floods, and to stress that there are other alternatives to this issue [housing] than the temporary city proposed by the city council,” says the coordinator.

Ceniriani points out that at the time of the first occupation, the movement’s complaint was about the sale of public properties. “At the time, we carried out an occupation demanding that the building be removed from the list. We won and it was removed. Subsequently, the mayor signed a decree determining that the building should be used for social housing. However, nothing has happened so far,” she says.

With the calamity the state is experiencing, the coordinator emphasizes it is necessary to reinforce the importance of making public buildings available to house families.

“We are a movement with 34 years of experience in the struggle for housing. We know that the solutions being presented are not immediate, they are not quick. People will have to stay in decent conditions for a long time. There is no way of quickly addressing people’s demand for housing. The quickest thing to do is to renovate the public buildings we have at hand and house families until we have a more adequate and definitive solution. We also need the city hall to turn on the electricity and water to this building immediately,” she concludes.