This footage was filmed and produced 29 August 2021.

Across Brazil, at least 14,300 families were evicted from March 2020 to June 2021, and another 85,000 are threatened with eviction, according to the organization Zero Evictions (Despejo Zero). In Sao Paulo state alone, nearly 4,000 have been evicted, with 34,000 more threatened with eviction, it found. Sao Paulo faces a homelessness crisis, as rent prices become too heavy of a burden for an increasingly impoverished population.

The video shows the western region of Sao Paulo, Jardim Jacqueline, where a community of people in difficult life situations is concentrated, as well as Christians who donate food in lunch boxes to people in extreme poverty and street drivers in various situations. Many of these people used to live in their homes, but because of the pandemic, they lost a lot, including jobs.

Video location: Favela do Jardim Jaqueline, Homeless at CEAGESP in SP.

Interview:

My name is Francisco da Chagas, I am from the interior of Natal. I came here to Sao Paulo in search of a life and got a job here, my wife also worked here. But in this period of the pandemic of everyone, and we live on the streets, right? I had my car, and then I couldn't pay the car loan, I had to sell it; I paid the rent, I had to leave because I couldn't afford the rent, and today we live on donations, unemployed, we don't have a family here in Sao Paulo... So the situation was difficult for us, you know?
We are looking for support. The mayor's office does not provide 100% of the support that we need, but like this: give a little support, right? In order not to sleep on the street today, we sleep in the reception center, the family support center, to see if we can find a job, and we promise that this pandemic is improving, but we should have such an expectation that it will improve in the right way, but we don't know either, right? And if it were not for this help from the volunteer staff, we would be starving, my unemployed wife and I would be starving.