Sochi residents endure upheaval as city prepares for Olympics

Over the past year, the three dozen residents of number 5 Akatsia Street in the Russian city of Sochi have been watching the gradual encroachment of the bulldozers and earthmovers with a mixture of curiosity and fear.

Curiosity because they assumed that, being on the path of a new six-lane highway, they would be moved to new housing; fear when it dawned on them that this was not going to happen.

The former army barracks is home to 36 residents, among them 11 children, and, at the moment, their only entrance and exit is through a gap in the concrete and past bulldozers and heavy machinery building the exit ramp right past their front yard. In a few weeks that gap will be closed.

On one side of the housing block are railroad tracks, while the other side is to be closed off by the motorway, which is being built for Russia's winter Olympic Games to be held in February. "We'll have to call a helicopter. It's the only way out for us," said Yulia Saltykova, keeping a close eye on her nine-year-old son Sergei.

"We can't let the children out of our sight; it's really dangerous with the machines everywhere. They work all night, and we can't sleep," she says, trying to be heard over the constant beeping and rumbling of lorries.

In preparation for the games, Sochi resembles a construction site. The government has poured $51bn into transforming the Soviet-era beach town - once a favourite destination of Joseph Stalin - into a resort city of the 21st century with five-star hotels, new roads and a high-speed train line.

While the games will help create jobs in the area, at least for the duration of the Olympics, many residents who initially cheered the games have long since given in to resentment about the conditions they are living in. "We've been breathing this dust for five years, sitting in these unbearable traffic jams for five years," says Sergei, a taxi driver in Sochi.

The city of more than 350,000 inhabitants has spent more than Rbs21bn ($639m) on relocating residents to new homes after the start of large-scale construction, according to the Sochi mayor's office. But new money seems scarce and problems have not gone away as the construction enters its most intensive phase.

According to Human Rights Watch, about 2,000 families have been displaced in preparation for the Olympics. While most were compensated and given new homes, some residents who have seen their homes devastated have not.

"The government is just adding insult to injury to these families when it should be fairly compensating or relocating them," says Jane Buchanan, an expert on the Sochi games for Human Rights Watch.

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"They were hammering and hammering one night and suddenly this happened," says Irina Burachleva, pointing at plastic sheeting which covers the space where the front wall of her living room once stood. She can no longer live in her house, number 12 Ternovaya Street. All along the street, residents show cracks running up their walls, collapsed foundations and signs of subsidence.

The city's emergency situations committee examined the site, found the landslide had been caused by the construction, and ordered the construction company Elektrosetstroiproyekt to reimburse residents for damage.

But a district court found that the landslide had been caused by "natural factors" and that the company had worked in accordance with all procedures. "They said, 'you don't have enough money to fight us in court, you'll never win'," says Andronik Karabajakian, who owns house number 6. "And, it turned out, we didn't."

The company said in a statement to the Financial Times that the landslide had been caused by heavy rains and not the construction work. They denied allegations that they sought to influence court proceedings and accused the inhabitants of the street of seeking to benefit from the situation. "We take such accusations very seriously and they are categorically untrue," said the company. "Such accusations should not be made without proof."

A few miles away on Bakinskaya Street, houses stand askew. One has partially submerged into the dirt after a landslide two years ago. Residents say this was due to unauthorised dumping of construction materials up the hill. Residents have not been offered compensation but have been offered resettlement in temporary dormitories, which many have refused to accept.

"Relocation of whole families with numerous children to a dormitory is not reasonable compensation or resettlement for the loss of an entire home," says Ms Buchanan. "It's not surprising people refuse in the hope of receiving what they're actually entitled to under law."

Anatoly Pakhomov, the mayor of Sochi, has had to field such questions from angry residents since he was elected in 2009. With a practised air, he defended the courts: "If a court in your country makes a decision, what do you do? Do you think that the decision shouldn't be implemented? If this were the case, what kind of democracy, what kind of rule of law would we have?

"You and me, we can look at something and say: this is because of the construction, but a court will bring in lots of experts and make a more informed decision."

Akatsia Street has a different problem. Because the motorway does not go straight through their home, they have been refused compensation, despite the fact that the project makes their homes uninhabitable. "They don't have to knock down our homes, so they say we are not due any compensation," says Ms Saltykova.

Mr Pakhomov has said: "We'll try to find some money to put them in new places." However, following the conversation it rapidly became clear that only renters would be moved to new rental accommodation, while property owners, such as Ms Saltykova, would still be stuck.

"We deserved a normal relocation," she says.

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