Preparations for the World Cup and Olympics are displacing hundreds of families in Rio de Janeiro. One neighborhood next to a major stadium has been turned into a ghost town.
Few families remain in this favela, where hundreds of families have been forced to move out to allow for preparations for the sporting events.
"Since February, nearly all of the buildings surrounding Freitas's home have been levelled as part of work to revamp the city's infrastructure before the World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games.
Redbrick shacks have been cracked open by earth-diggers. Streets are covered in a thick carpet of rubble, litter and twisted metal. By night, crack addicts squat in abandoned shacks, filling sitting rooms with empty bottles, filthy mattresses and crack pipes improvised from plastic cups. The stench of human excrement hangs in the air.
'It looks like you are in Iraq or Libya,' Freitas said, wading across mounds of debris that now encircle his home. 'I don't have any neighbours left. It's a ghost town.'"
FULL STORY: Rio World Cup demolitions leave favela families trapped in ghost town
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