'People are getting poorer': hunger and homelessness as Brazil crisis deepens

[Judi Lynn]

Unemployment and social instability threaten unwelcome return to the past in recession-hit country once seen as a model for developing economies

Dom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
@domphillips
Wednesday 19 July 2017 09.02 EDT



It wasn’t yet 5am when Miriam Gomes drove up to Happy Little Angel, the social project she runs in the scruffy Cidade Nova neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro, but the queue for her weekly food handout was already a hundred yards long.

Some had slept outside – those among Rio’s growing army of homeless people, or who lived too far away to get there by 6.30am, when those registered could start collecting a bag of vegetables, fruit, rice, beans, pasta, milk and biscuits, and a little chocolate.

These are some of the victims of a worsening problem in a country once praised for reducing poverty, but where the numbers of poor are climbing again.

Brazil has slumped into its worst recession for decades, with 14 million people unemployed.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/jul/19/people-getting-poorer-hunger-homelessness-brazil-crisis