On the traditional Rua Barão de Itapetininga, in the center of São Paulo, and in many others on the boardwalk, dozens of commercial establishments were closed. Everywhere, doors are down, “for rent” signs, little movement on the street and discouraged merchants. Open stores gave way to “for rent” signs in the central region of São Paulo – Frame TV Brasil/Agência Brasil Owner of a newsstand since 1986, Paolo Pellegrini considers that this is the worst moment. “Today it is a street with 80% open and 20% closed. It’s a lot in such a short stretch,” he told TV Brasil. The João Brícola Building is an iconic building from the beginning of the last century. It housed the first department store in Brazil. Other stores came later. The last one stayed in this same building for 19 years, but closed last month. “It was a very good business, it occupied almost every floor here and it was very good. I looked for everything and found it here. It looked like a mall”, recalled the guard Edneide Dias. Other important streets of popular commerce in São Paulo follow in the same direction. On Rua José Paulino, a traditional women’s clothing street, the stores are still open, but the movement is well below what it once was. “The movement dropped a lot. Everyone here is saying the same thing”, points out salesperson Solânia Silva. Merchants on Rua Santa Ifigênia say that traffic in the region has dropped in recent years – Rovena Rosa/Agência Brasil Another emblematic commercial street is Rua Santa Ifigênia, dedicated to the sale of electronics. Stores open too, but with far fewer consumers. “Three years ago it was 100% of the movement, now 60%, 70% and look there”, evaluated the seller João Carlos Costa. Watch TV Brasil report: Scenario One of the explanations for this scenario is the serious economic crisis caused by the pandemic that contributed to the closure of many stores and left thousands of people living on the streets of São Paulo. Today, according to a survey by the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), there are 52,000 homeless people. Another explanation is the constant robberies and thefts, especially of cell phones, in the downtown streets. For urban planner Aluízio Marino, coordinator of the Public Space and Right to the City Laboratory (Labcidade), at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of São Paulo (USP), another major problem is the unsuccessful public policies aimed at drug addicts in Cracolândia, that spread this population to the entire center. “This policy is being permanent. Before, we had a dispersion that later, at some point, returned somewhere. So this permanent policy of maintaining dispersion, in the specific case of this territory in Luz, Santa Ifigênia, Campos Elíseos, has turned this territory into a powder keg”, he pointed out. For him, the solution demands less police and more actions for housing, care and combating trafficking. “Operating the fight against trafficking on a scale that is not the local scale or, at least, not just the local scale. And, there in the territory, there needs to be a joint and strong action by the State to think about housing and care policies”, he added. Platform On Thursday (13), the government of São Paulo launched a platform with a diagnosis of security actions and crimes committed in the central region of São Paulo, especially in areas where narcotics are used, known as Cracolândia. The tool had already been in use since March by security agents. “The objective is to facilitate the identification of criminal hot spots and the definition of actions to face crime so that the results obtained are more assertive and efficient”, the government said in a note. The Secretariat of Public Security (SSP) hopes that the system will democratize access to information in the central region, given that it is available to the entire population. The diagnosis will be updated weekly with records of robberies and thefts, in addition to the respective police actions.
Agência Brasil
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