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RIGHTS: Millions Displaced by Olympic Games

Am Johal

VANCOUVER, Jun 7 2007 (IPS) - Governments may fiercely compete for the honour of hosting the world’s premier sporting event. But for minority groups and the poor, the Olympic Games have been anything but a windfall.

A new report by the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), a U.N.-funded agency, says that gentrification and soaring real estate prices linked to the Games have displaced more than two million people in the last 20 years.

Titled “Fair Play for Housing Rights: Mega-Events, Olympic Games and Housing Rights”, the report, released Tuesday, says that the vast majority of the forced evictions happened in Seoul, South Korea and in Beijing, where the 2008 Summer Olympics will take place.

“It is shocking and entirely unacceptable that 1.25 million people have already been displaced in Beijing, in preparation for the 2008 Games, in flagrant violation of their right to adequate housing,” said Jean du Plessis, COHRE’s executive director, in a statement.

The 2004 Athens Olympics affected the Roma population, and in Atlanta, the low income African American population suffered the most acute impact from the 1996 Olympics.

The COHRE report is the most comprehensive study to date on the subject of hallmark events and displacement. There will be a conference later this month to push the International Olympic Committee to reform its evaluation processes and ensure sustainability for future Olympic Games.

Although the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics were not a major subject of this study, activists say that dozens of low income people were evicted from their homes for the international sports event.

And the head of the Olympic Organising Committee at that time was Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts who is now one of several Republican candidates vying for his party’s nomination in the 2008 presidential elections.

Romney was brought in to rescue the Games after a series of financial scandals had thrown them into disrepute. Now his role in planning the Olympics is raising conflicted views about his legacy.

At the time, the U.S. state of Utah, where more than 60 percent of the residents are Mormons, welcomed Romney, also a Mormon, as the new head of the Olympic Organising Committee.

Glen Bailey, founder of a local Olympic watchdog group called Impact 2002 and Beyond, and director of a food pantry for low income people in Salt Lake City, said, “It was five years ago, so it’s hard to remember all the details and who is to blame for all the problems.”

“There was a temporary shelter opened during the Olympics, more beds for the homeless for a brief period, but no planning had been put in to place to deal with the actual Olympic-related evictions. Mitt Romney and the Salt Lake Olympic Organising Committee didn’t play a useful role in ameliorating the situation,” Bailey told IPS.

He recalled that when Romney came in after the scandal, he was often referred to as the “White Knight”.

“His job was to get things back on track and mend some fences. He came to our meetings and instructed his staff to be responsive,” Bailey said. “They needed to move on things like jobs and housing to prevent the worst things from happening. Civil liberties and eviction issues were prevalent.”

In his book, “Turnaround”, about his role on the committee, Romney dismissed the concerns of community groups that were critical of the planning and organisation of the massive international winter sports event.

“He is a very good politician. He looks you in the eye… The interactions with him were positive, on substantive stuff. In reality, what we accomplished with him was not very much. He did enough so that we weren’t a thorn in his side,” said Bailey.

Alex Burgos, a spokesperson from the Mitt Romney Campaign, told IPS, “One of Governor Romney’s greatest successes was staging the Olympics after a financial scandal. This was an organisation that had a 379-million-dollar deficit and he left it with a 100-million-dollar surplus. Governor Romney was able to build community spirit and bring community and business leaders together.”

One example of Salt Lake City rent increases around the time of the Olympics included a basement apartment near the university which jumped from 550 dollars per month to 2,500 dollars per month for February 2002.

Owners of condominiums and townhouses also were involved in evicting people. One townhouse complex called Connaught Place sent eviction notices to tenants in order to accommodate Federal Bureau of Investigation agents during the Olympics, but the owners backed off after the media publicised the matter.

The Aspenwood apartments in the suburb of West Valley City has about 175 units, of which approximately 50 to 70 two-bedroom apartments were to be used to house Secret Service agents. The renters evicted were low income, paying a relatively moderate price of 560 to 600 dollars a month. The owner wanted to use the opportunity to evict poorer tenants, improve the property and rent to higher income people after the Games.

Bailey told IPS, “As far as I know, that’s exactly what happened. Tenants accused management of letting the place fall apart to make it easier to justify the evictions.”

There was a well publicised case where approximately 20 units at Harrison Place Condominiums were under contract to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and tenants were being evicted. After bad press, the owner canceled the FEMA deal.

There were numerous evictions from modestly priced residential hotels, and some instances where people were evicted from several places as they were forced from one low-rent hotel to another.

In Vancouver, where the 2010 Winter Olympics will be hosted, there have been over 700 units of low-income single resident hotel units which have converted to other uses.

Although much of this gentrification in the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood cannot be directly attributed to the Olympics, critics have argued that the speculative fever brought on by the Games is a contributing factor. During the Expo 86 World’s Fair, over 1,000 people were evicted from this neighbourhood.

Though the British Columbia provincial government has recently purchased some single residency hotels which were under threat of conversion, community groups are still calling for 3,200 units of housing to be built before the Olympics.

An internal report released by the Vancouver Olympic Organising Committee argues that they have already met 80 percent of their sustainability targets. The report was criticised by community groups who claimed it was not independent.

*Am Johal was a founding member of the Impact of the Olympics on Community Coalition in Vancouver, a community watchdog group.