A/HRC/13/20 21. Examples of displacement due to gentrification and escalating housing costs include (a) in Seoul, apartment prices increased by 20.4 per cent in the first eight months of 1988, and land prices soared by 27 per cent in 1988, the steepest rise since 1978; 18 (b) in Barcelona, the increase in house pricing during the five-year period surrounding the Games was 131 per cent, while in the rest of the country prices increased by 83 per cent19; in 1993, a year after the Olympics, house prices only rose by 2 per cent;20 (c) in Atlanta, around 15,000 low-income residents were forced out of the city as the annual rent increase rose from 0.4 per cent in 1991 to 7.9 per cent in 1996 in preparation for the 1996 Olympic Games; 21 (d) in Sydney, the increase in house pricing during the five-year period before the Games was 50 per cent while in the rest of the country prices increased by 39 per cent;22 (e) in Beijing, around 1.5 million people were displaced from their homes to allow for urban renewal in the run-up to the 2008 Olympic Games,23 (f) in London, property prices in the areas surrounding the Olympic site increased by 1.4 per cent to 4.6 per cent after the announcement that the city had won the bid, while in the rest of the city prices were down by 0.2 per cent.24 3. Reduction in the availability of social and low-cost housing 22. The impact of redevelopment and beautification processes on housing accessibility and affordability is even greater when it affects neighbourhoods containing low income dwellings and social housing. Frequently located in poor areas of the city, social housing provides local residents with a low-cost housing opportunity, sometimes subsidized by the State. However, redevelopment projects executed in preparation for mega-events, for the most part undertaken in underdeveloped neighbourhoods, tend to target social housing dwellings in their demolition plans. Given the fact that many housing projects are Stateowned, redevelopment projects tend to demolish them to open space for new developments. The availability of low-cost housing is thus dramatically reduced rendering these groups even more vulnerable to violations of their rights. 23. Examples of decreased availability of social housing include (a) in Atlanta, 1,200 social housing units for the poor were destroyed in preparation for the Olympic Games; 25 (b) in Sydney, reports suggest that around 6,000 people were made homeless in the run-up to the Olympics;26 (c) in Vancouver, more than 1,400 low-income housing units were lost in connection to real estate speculation generated by the 2010 Winter Olympic Games;27 (d) in South Africa, the Minister for Housing noted that plans to build hundreds of thousands of new low-cost homes could be affected by shifting budget demands in the run-up to the 2010 World Cup (A/HRC/7/16/Add.3, para. 69); (e) in London, the Clays Lane State, a historic social housing on the Olympic Park site where around 400 people lived, was demolished. 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 8 Solomon J. Greene; op. cit, pp. 172, 179. “2012 Home Games: a study of the housing and regeneration legacies of recent Olympic and Paralympic Games and the implications for residents of east London”, East Thames Group, p. 14. “Barcelona. International events and housing rights: a focus on the Olympic Games”, COHRE, 2007. “2012 Home Games”, op cit, p. 14. Ibid. “One world, whose dream? Housing rights violations and the Beijing Olympic Games”, COHRE, 2008, p. 6. “Hosting the 2012 Olympic Games: London’s Olympic preparations and housing rights concerns”, 2001, COHRE, p. 31. “2012 Home Games”, op. cit., p. 13. Ibid., p. 16. “Cracks in the foundation”, Pivot Legal Society, September 2006, p. 1, 3.