Non-proprietary forms of living threatened: evictions and removals in São Paulo during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

From the perverse conjunction between an increasing social and economic crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2022) — with rising unemployment, deteriorating incomes and increase of debt — and an unprecedent real estate boom, which caused a rise in land and rent prices, emerged new squats and an intensified number of displacements and evictions in São Paulo city, Brazil. However, the occurrence of displacement and evictions is quite invisible in the field of urban policies. This article presents the methods used by the Evictions Observatory to identify these processes, using cartography as a research method and analysis. By mobilizing data derived from different sources, we relate evictions to changes in real estate-renting dynamics that leads to the displacement of non-proprietary forms of living. We also investigated their relation with governmental plans, policies and projects which take on the role of incentivizing the market to produce new real estate products or offering rent as a service, in a context of increasing participation of real estate as financial assets and growing presence of asset managers and digital platforms in these markets.