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Helena Roseta: “Isto é o futuro. Não podemos só atirar
dinheiro para cima das pessoas”
Helena Roseta: "O direito à habitação não pode ser o
parente pobre dos direitos sociais"
Luis Barra
POLÍTICA
26.06.2020 às 09h31
São 10 milhões de
euros por ano para financiar projetos até 50 mil euros e que vão ajudar a “dar
poder às pessoas nos bairros mais pobres”. A arquiteta, ex-deputada e
ex-presidente da Assembleia Municipal de Lisboa, vai ser o rosto do programa
“Bairros Saudáveis”
O nome tem
conotação “positiva” e isso não acontece por acaso. “Não é preciso fazer
nenhuma lista negra. Quem não quer viver num bairro saudável?”, pergunta Helena
Roseta. A arquiteta vai liderar um programa do Governo que contará com 10
milhões de euros, todos os anos (este ano serão apenas três milhões), para
financiar projetos comunitários apresentados pelas pessoas dos bairros para
melhorar a vida do sítio onde moram. “Há um palavrão, que não se diz em
português, mas que resume bem a ideia: queremos empoderar as pessoas”, explica
à VISÃO a ex-deputada eleita pelas listas do PS.
As regras de
funcionamento são relativamente simples. Um grupo de pessoas, uma associação,
uma organização da comunidade, o centro de saúde da freguesia – a escolha de
parceiros é livre – juntam-se e definem um projeto de intervenção local. As
candidaturas têm de ser sempre feitas em parceria e integrar uma entidade coletiva,
porque essa é a única forma de poderem receber as verbas do Governo central que
depois vão aplicar no seu projeto.
As pessoas sabem
aquilo de que precisam, são capazes de fazer coisa extraordinárias e são
altamente proativas, têm é de ter recursos
HELENA ROSETA, RESPONSÁVEL PELO PROGRAMA ‘BAIRROS
SAUDÁVEIS’
Esses parceiros
apresentam a ideia a um júri independente da equipa responsável pelo programa –
“ainda não posso revelar nomes mas já tenho umas ideias”, diz Roseta. Esse júri
avalia, então, a proposta e atribui-lhe uma pontuação (os critérios de
avaliação vão ser divulgados em resolução do Governo). A iniciativa é renovada
todos os anos e não tem, à partida, data para ser encerrada.
A criatividade de
cada grupo é o limite. Helena Roseta dá os exemplos da Graça, onde 100 famílias
divididas em duas torres se juntaram para instalar alarmes de incêndios nos
prédios onde viviam. “Se não fosse aquele sistema, arriscavam-se a morrer ali
todos caso houvesse um fogo”, explica. Noutro caso, nas Olaias, um grupo de
moradores e associações de uma zona carenciada propuseram a construção de uma
pista de skate. “Aquele projeto reabilitou a vida do bairro e começaram a
juntar-se ali moradores de bairros vizinhos”, recorda a antiga presidente da
Assembleia Municipal de Lisboa. Ainda noutro caso, em Chelas, vários designers
juntaram-se a uma organização local, foram buscar equipamentos em desuso de
antigas fábricas e criaram uma oficina de arte. “Os artigos”, recorda Roseta,
“acabaram por ser vendidos no Centro Cultural de Belém”.
Depois de
apresentados ao júri, os projetos são divididos em três categorias, em função
do valor considerado necessário para a sua execução, que pode ir até aos cinco
mil, 25 mil ou 50 mil euros. Desde que a ideia é submetida ao júri até à sua
concretização não deverão passar “mais de nove meses”, garante Helena Roseta,
que já traz de Lisboa a experiência acumulada da liderança de um programa em
tudo idêntico ao atual. O convite para as funções chegou-lhe na manhã
quinta-feira, vindo do gabinete da ministra da Saúde, Marta Temido. Roseta
colocou uma condição: que exercesse as funções sem qualquer vencimento.
“Temos de
acreditar na energia das pessoas”, defende a arquiteta, que agora surge à
frente de um programa que já conhece mas que é adaptado à realidade da
pandemia. “Os determinantes de saúde potenciam” o projeto, porque envolvem
questões como a habitação, o espaço público, a saúde, justifica. “As pessoas
sabem aquilo de que precisam, são capazes de fazer coisa extraordinárias e são
altamente proativas, têm é de ter recursos”, acrescenta ainda. “Essa é a
lição da minha vida.”
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Como a pandemia expôs ao mundo a situação dramática dos
migrantes africanos em Portugal
José Caria
SOCIEDADE
25.06.2020 às 13h12
O retrato é feito pela Bloomberg, que mergulhou no bairro
da Jamaica, nos arredores da capital, e não é bonito
Oficialmente, chama-se Urbanização do Vale de Chícharos,
no Seixal, distrito de Setúbal. Em boa verdade são uns prédios inacabados,
propriedade da Urbangol, sociedade sedeada num paraíso fiscal e com dívidas ao
fisco. Na cintura da grande Lisboa, estão ocupados sobretudo por imigrantes dos
países africanos de língua portuguesa. Uma maioria de gente sem condições
mínimas para comprar ou sequer alugar uma casa. Muitos vivem ali há mais de 20
anos. E aguardam, desde então, pela promessa de realojamento por parte da
autarquia.
Foi neste cenário que a Bloomberg mergulhou, muito longe do
país seguro e bonito que o turismo quer vender lá para fora. Tal como o The
Guardian fizera no ano passado. E ali se cruzou com Neide Jordão, de 35 anos,
que vive com os cinco filhos, uma irmã e a mãe, de 63, num daqueles
apartamentos de tijolo à vista. Sem espaço para poder ter camas para todos, a
mulher dorme no sofá. E vai sobrevivendo a uma série de problemas respiratórios
crónicos, causados pela humidade das infiltrações de água na construção. Em boa
verdade, é tudo muito parecido à vida de pobreza e miséria de que Neide escapou
em criança, quando ainda vivia em Africa. “Sinto que todos nós fomos esquecidos
e é muito doloroso”, assume. “Quantas vezes não me pergunto se não estaríamos
melhor em Angola…”
É um mundo secreto que Lisboa tem à frente e que foi
recentemente exposto,. Falamos de um bairro que abriga 160 famílias e que
raramente faz notícia de jornal por boas razões. Há um ano, as equipas de
televisão visitaram a área depois de imagens de polícias a espancarem alguns
moradores terem corrido as redes sociais. Agora, foi porque disparou o número
de infetados por coronavírus. Mas quando se atentou às condições em que as
pessoas vivem, logo se percebeu as razões disso.
Narrativa enganadora
“Até há muito pouco tempo, corria a narrativa de que os
bairros de lata do país já tinham desaparecido”, diz Rita Silva, chefe da
Habita. A organização remonta a 2013 e atua na gestão da habitação em Lisboa.
“A pandemia acabou por desfazer esse discurso e esta realidade tornou-se
evidente.”
Sobretudo desde que o aumento de casos por ali fez
manchetes, no final de maio. Logo o governo veio sublinhar que reconheceu a
gravidade do problema muito antes de tudo isto. Começou por recordar que está a
realojar famílias desde 2018 e que o processo começou pelos prédios
“estruturalmente perigosos”. “Está em andamento”, como disse àquela publicação
Ana Pinho, secretária de Estado da Habitação. Mas também sabemos que o
financiamento para programas de habitação pública foi reduzido, resultado das
medidas da austeridade imposta em 2011.
Entretanto, o boom imobiliário transformou Lisboa num dos
mercados mais procurados da Europa. Como quem diz, com o aumento de alugueres
de curta duração para turistas e redução de casas a preços acessíveis para os
residentes. Feitas as contas, a habitação social representa apenas 2% do número
das nossas unidades disponíveis para alugar. Um valor muito mais baixo do que
os 14% em França e mesmo os 4% em Espanha. “Houve um fracasso histórico do estado
em Portugal em garantir aos cidadãos o direito à moradia decente”, assume Ana
Pinho.
Um longo caminho a percorrer
É esse retrato que faz mais detalhadamente a socióloga
Cristina Roldão, quando diz que o país ainda tem um longo caminho a percorrer
para acabar com a discriminação racial. “As minorias negras ainda lutam para
subir na escada da habitação e não têm acesso a empregos que sejam mais bem
pagos.” O pior? “Grande parte do racismo que existe em Portugal é dirigida a
negros que são portugueses”, remata a especialista.
O discurso oficial fez muito pela ideia feita que já não
havia bairros de lata no país, por efeito do Programa Especial de Realojamento,
lançado em 1993. Mas há um ano, a contabilidade foi feita de novo e apontou que
há pelo menos 13 bairros destes escaparam à demolição. A lista de candidatos a
casas novas também nunca parou de crescer.
De acordo com Simone Tulumello, professor de geografia do
Instituto de Ciências Sociais, são cerca de 14 mil as famílias que vivem em
condições inadequadas na região de Lisboa. “Não é tão mau como nos anos 1990,
mas o problema continua a existir. E pode piorar por causa da crise que se
avizinha como efeito da pandemia”. O facto, sublinha Tulumello, é que “Portugal
nunca realmente teve uma política universal para fornecer casas aos mais
pobres. “Na maioria das vezes conta com os municípios para fazer esse
trabalho.”
Burocracia e aumento dos preços
Recorde-se que, em 2018, quase 200 moradores do dito
bairro da Jamaica foram transferidos para novas casas fora dali. O município
prometeu realojar mais 74 famílias no ano passado, mas o processo foi atrasado.
Salimo Mendes, chefe da associação de moradores, atribuiu a culpa “à burocracia
e ao aumento dos preços dos imóveis.”
Neide Jordão, a tal mulher que vive com os cinco filhos,
a irmã e a mãe num apartamento mínimo, é uma das pessoas que consta da lista de
espera. “Prometeram à minha família que seríamos dos primeiros a mudar, logo em
1994. Ainda estou à espera.”
Pandemic Exposes Plight of Portugal’s African
Migrants
Makeshift settlements in Lisbon are an extreme example
of the struggles of minorities in the world’s richest continent.
Henrique
Almeida
By 23 June
2020, 06:01 CEST
Neide Jordão
shoves a broken refrigerator and a stack of bags with dirty laundry to the side
as she makes her way out of her tiny apartment in an unfinished brick building.
Living with her three sons, two daughters, a sister, and 63-year-old mother,
Jordão, 35, sleeps on a couch and struggles with chronic breathing problems
caused by the moisture from leaking water. She emerges onto an unpaved street
in Lisbon lined with battered cars and ramshackle sheds.
The scene
is more evocative of the poverty she escaped from as a child in Africa than of
the capital of one of Europe’s former colonial powers. “I feel like we’ve all
been forgotten—it’s painful,” says Jordão, trying to tidy up among the debris
of discarded furniture and cardboard boxes outside her home. “I often wonder if
we’d be better off back in Angola.”
Lisbon has
a secret world on its fringes that’s now being exposed as the health and economic
implications of the coronavirus crisis shine a spotlight on the plight of
minorities across the western world. And the Black Lives Matter protests in the
U.S., sparked by the killing of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis
police officer, have triggered demonstrations in Europe and raised some
uncomfortable questions for former imperial powers.
Lisbon’s
“Jamaica” neighborhood is home to 160 families mostly of African descent and
stands out as an extreme example of life on the world’s wealthiest continent
and the social disparities that have been thrust onto the political agenda in
the era of coronavirus. The last time television crews arrived in the
area—known officially as Vale de Chícharos—was after video footage of police
officers beating some of the area’s residents triggered demonstrations in 2019.
The
government has identified 472 of what it calls clusters of inadequate
housing—including makeshift shanties and decrepit buildings—scattered across
the city, where residents need to be rehoused. Some of the worst neighborhoods
are on the outskirts, far from the glitzy condominiums in the city center
snapped up by foreign investors, including rich Brazilians seeking European
passports under a “ golden visa” program. “There was a narrative until recently
that the shantytowns in our country had already disappeared,” says Rita Silva,
the head of Habita, a Lisbon organization that advocates for housing rights.
“With the pandemic this reality has become even more evident.”
While
Portugal has managed to contain Covid-19 better than neighboring Spain, most of
the new infections have been in the Lisbon region and particularly in poorer
neighborhoods. The spike in cases in places such as Jamaica, about 20
kilometers (12.4 miles) from the center of the capital, made headlines in
Portuguese media at the end of May and sparked a debate among politicians over
the urgency of doing more to fight the city’s housing crisis, especially now
that the country is in a recession.
The
government of Prime Minister António Costa, a former mayor of Lisbon, says it
recognized the gravity of the problem in Jamaica long before coronavirus
struck. It’s been rehousing families since 2018, starting with those in the
most structurally dangerous buildings, and the process is ongoing, Ana Pinho,
Portugal’s secretary of state for housing, said in an email.
Successive
governments had relied on the private market to resolve the housing shortage,
but that didn’t happen, said Pinho. Furthermore, funding for public housing
programs was reduced as part of the austerity measures Portugal was forced to
enact as a condition for receiving a bailout in 2011 during the European debt
crisis.
A property
boom turned Lisbon into one of Western Europe’s hottest markets, while a rise
in short-term rentals catering to tourists exacerbated Lisbon’s housing crisis
by reducing the supply of affordable homes. Social housing accounts for just 2%
of the stock of rental units in Portugal, compared with 14% in France and 4% in
Spain. “There has been a historical failure of the state in Portugal to
guarantee citizens the right to decent housing,” Pinho said.
The
unspoken reality is that it’s minority communities that are being hit hardest
in a country that’s drawn generations of immigrants from former colonies.
Portugal doesn’t gather data on the race and ethnicity of its 10 million
inhabitants. What’s known is that there are more than the 81,000 residents from
former African colonies registered with the Immigration and Borders Service.
While Costa
has defended the arrival of more migrants, the country still has a long way to
go to end racial discrimination, says Cristina Roldão, a sociologist in Lisbon.
She says Black minorities struggle to get on the housing ladder and are denied
access to better paid jobs. The United Nations has called out Portugal in the
past for its unequal treatment of minorities, most recently in a 2017 report by
the special rapporteur on adequate housing.
“A big part
of the racism that exists in Portugal is directed at Black people who are
Portuguese nationals,” said Roldão. “This is a problem that isn’t openly
debated and has to do with Portugal’s colonial past.”
Indeed, the
U.S. protests that spread to Europe have morphed into a backlash against the
inglorious chapters in the continent’s past. A statue of a former slave trader
was toppled in the English city of Bristol. In Belgium, activists removed a
monument of King Leopold II, who brutally ruled over what was then Congo in the
late 19th century. In Lisbon, António Vieira, a 17th century preacher who lived
in Brazil when Portugal was shipping slaves from Africa across the Atlantic,
was the target. His statue was vandalized earlier this month, and the word
“de-colonize” was daubed in red.
Portugal
was the last European nation to surrender its African territories. The military
coup that overthrew the Portuguese dictatorship in 1974 ushered in independence
for Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau. But later civil wars generated a
surge of Africans heading to Lisbon in search of a better life.
Immigrants
continued to arrive after Portugal joined the European Union in 1986 and
embarked on major infrastructure projects during the 1990s. The men mostly took
up jobs in construction, while the women worked as housemaids. Many families
ended up building their own homes out of wood and any brick and metal they
could find to create the makeshift neighborhoods on the outskirts of Lisbon.
Others moved into unfinished buildings like the multistory brick structure in
Jamaica.
While
Portugal has demolished some shantytowns and rehoused some of their residents,
the list of candidates for new homes has kept on growing. There are about
14,000 families living in inadequate housing conditions in Lisbon, according to
Simone Tulumello, an assistant research professor of geography at the Institute
of Social Sciences in the city. “It’s not as bad as in the 1990s, but the problem
continues to exist and may get worse because of the imminent crisis,” he says.
“The fact is, Portugal never really had a universal policy to provide homes for
the poor and often relied on the municipalities to do that work.”
In 2018
almost 200 residents of Jamaica were moved to new homes outside the
neighborhood. The local municipality promised to rehouse another 74 families
last year, but the process was delayed. Salimo Mendes, head of the residents’
association, blamed it on bureaucracy and rising property prices.
Before the
pandemic, Portugal was enjoying one of its highest growth rates in decades.
Now, the International Monetary Fund projects the economy will contract 8% this
year after expanding 2.2% in 2019. But the virus has made it clear that any
recovery in Portugal needs to include the African families living in shacks or
unfinished buildings, says Silva, the head of the Habita housing organization.
In Jamaica
most residents stayed inside when a reporter visited the neighborhood recently:
The isolation was either to avoid being infected by the coronavirus or, some
said, to avoid being seen on the evening news. They say they are fed up by
being depicted as trouble. “People sometimes look at you as if you’re from
another planet when you tell them you’re from Jamaica,” says Manuela Pedro, a
33-year-old pregnant woman who lives in one of the unfinished buildings.
Jordão has
been on the waiting list to move from her cramped apartment for almost three
decades. She says they were close to moving last year when families were being
rehoused, but it didn’t come to fruition. “The local authorities promised to
relocate my family to a three-bedroom apartment back in 1994,” she says, while
she tugs at the yellow T-shirt she’s wearing with the English words “Delete the
Drama.” She says, “I’m still waiting.” —With Andrew Blackman
This
article is more than 1 year old
Pandemic Exposes Plight of Portugal’s African Migrants
Cities
A viral video of police violence has brought national
attention to the long-ghettoised community in Bairro da Jamaica
Ana Naomi de
Sousa in Lisbon
Thu 31 Jan
2019 12.00 GMTLast modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.46 GMT
From time
to time, cars of curious people drive slowly though Bairro da Jamaica, craning
their necks for a peek at the neighbourhood that’s been in the headlines across
Portugal for several days now. None of them step out of their vehicles.
They’re
here to look at the broken glass, the smashed roof tiles and the evidence of
last week’s violence. The tallest of the bairro’s self-built housing towers is
now derelict, fenced off with yellow tape and awaiting demolition; the others
are also scheduled to be torn down, but are still occupied for now.
“Most of
the residents here are just regular people: they go to school, they work, they
pay their bills, they pay taxes, they contribute to society like everyone
else,” says Liliana Jordão, 27, a resident of this neighbourhood on the
southern outskirts of greater Lisbon. “But if Bairro da Jamaica already had a
really bad reputation, this week it’s been like a zoo.”
It began
last week with a scrap between two residents, but it was when the police
arrived that the real story kicked off: officers were captured on video
beating, pushing and dragging anyone who came into their path.
Filmed by
local residents, the video quickly went viral on social media, spreading across
the estates and neighbourhoods of the city’s peripheries, where most of
Portugal’s black, Afro-descendent population resides.
“When I saw
the video, the way they treated those women, I actually wept,” says Jordão. “It
could easily have been my mother. And then I thought to myself, no, enough is
enough, I have to do something”.
This is where the segregation of
Portuguese-speaking African immigrants and subsequent generations began
Antonio
Brito Guterres
The
following day around 300 people, most of them young, black residents of
Lisbon’s suburbs, held a spontaneous demonstration in the centre of the city
chanting “Stop racist police brutality”. Police responded by firing rubber
bullets towards the protesters, with the confrontations resulting in four
arrests. Tensions rose from there, with police spokespeople and unions trading accusations
of excessive force and institutional racism.
Across the
suburbs cars have been set on fire and police stations targeted, as the
original call to protest – “There are many Jamaicas” – has echoed across the
country, reflecting an urban reality that is rarely discussed in Portugal. .
Shanty
towns proliferated in Portugal from the 1960s onwards, the combined result of
poor urban planning, large-scale migration from the countryside and immigration
from the former Portuguese colonies of Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea
Bissau and Sao Tome and Principe. “African immigrants were pushed into
thoroughly precarious conditions, often having to resort to building their own
homes, illegally, and on the outskirts of the city,” says Antonio Brito
Guterres, an urban social worker. “This is where the segregation of
Portuguese-speaking African immigrants and subsequent generations began, from
the rest of the city.”
The
structural problems in Bairro da Jamaica, approximately 30 years since it was
first established, are typical of neglected self-built neighbourhoods: illegal
electricity supply, improvised sewage and water arrangements, and inadequate
building conditions. “It’s damn cold in the winter and boiling in the summer”,
says resident Cândido Guilherme de Almeida Pedro, 29.
After years
of being ignored, at the end of 2017 a plan for Bairro da Jamaica was finally
agreed as part the national resettlement programme, the PER (Programa Especial
de Realojamento). Launched in Portugal in the 1990s to demolish the shanty
towns, the PER approach has been defined by replacing self-built housing with
concrete housing estates. Critics say it has replaced slums with ghettos. A
2017 report by the UN Special rapporteur on adequate housing raised concerns
about the situation of the African descendent and Roma gypsy (cigano)
communities in Portugal, flagging living conditions “that directly threaten a
dignified life, which is at the centre of the human right to housing.” They
also criticised the detrimental effects – including homelessness – of
demolitions and evictions instigated by the PER.
“A lot of
those neighbourhoods are seen as ‘sensitive zones’ by the security forces”,
says Guterres. “But that doesn’t correlate with crime rates. It’s about racial
bias within the police.”
We don’t want war with the police. We need to
show them, however, that we have rights ... the way they behave needs to change
Liliana
Jordão
Heavy-handed
policing in the suburbs is blamed for the deaths of at least 10 people in the
last 15 years – among them 14-year old Elson Sanches in 2009 – and no police
officer has ever been convicted in connection with them. Then there is the high
profile case, currently in court, in which 17 police agents stand accused by
the public prosecutor of a litany of crimes against a number of young black men
and women from the self-built neighbourhood of Cova da Moura, including
aggravated kidnapping, falsifying testimonies, racial abuse and assault.
Meanwhile,
in 2016, a UN report from the Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination said it remained concerned with racism experienced in Portugal
and repeated recommendations that the country adopted specific measures aimed
at the African descendent population, who “remain invisible in the most
significant positions” in society.
For Almeida
Pedro and many others, Monday’s demonstration was a long time coming.
“It’s damn
cold in the winter and boiling in the summer,” says Cândido Guilherme de
Almeida Pedro of the neighbourhood’s housing.
“The
protest is to do with a lot of things that have been accumulating for a long
time. You have lots of young people who want to be part of society but find
themselves totally marginalised. What happened here in the bairro was really
the last straw”, he says.
“Of course
we don’t want war with the police,” adds Jordão. “We need to show them,
however, that we have rights - as much as we have responsibilities - and the
way they behave needs to change.”
With the
new plan to resettle people across the local area, rather than in a purpose
built estate far away, the residents of Bairro da Jamaica hope they will avoid
being ghettoised like other communities before them. But with the continued
perceived impunity of the police and the apparent unwillingness of Portuguese
security forces to even consider the issue of institutionalised racism, the
source of tension between African descent communities in the peripheries of
Lisbon and the police will remain.
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