The two-storey complex of tiny homes in gentrifying Marvila was bought up by developers – but nobody consulted the low-income families who have lived there for decades
When the Santos Lima building went up for sale for €7.2m (£6.4m) in Marvila, a former industrial area of Lisbon, investors might have thought they’d spotted a bargain. Running some 100m along the Rua do Açucar, the building was listed online as unoccupied and “ideal for being turned into an apart-hotel or offices”. But to its long-term residents, the advertisement came as a shock.
“I think [the companies] bought it without knowing … the state of the building, and without knowing what was inside it,” says resident Eduardo Nicola, a retired traffic policeman who lives in Santos Lima. Hidden behind the building’s grand 19th-century facade is a two-story complex of tiny homes, originally destined for workers at the nearby factories and now occupied by low-income renters.
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