BRAZIL: Apartment in Rio

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One of Rio's flashiest suburbs—Copacabana—has 16,000 empty apartments, and through the city there are thousands of others. But there is also a housing shortage.

The reason for this strange state of affairs is that the empty Copacabana apartments, like many others in the great modern buildings that line Rio's beaches and stalk its hillsides (TIME, Feb. 25, 1946), are owned by speculators who have no intention of becoming landlords. Tax laws are on the side of the speculator. The only real-estate tax an owner pays is 10% on rental value, established after an apartment is completed—and a stepladder in an entrance hall is evidence enough that the building is not yet done.

How this situation affects apartment-hunters was told this week by TIME Correspondents Bill White and Connie Burwell White:

The obvious way to find an apartment is to call a real-estate agent—anywhere but in Rio, that is. Agents here can't find apartments and they firmly refuse new business. So you read advertisements, spot something, find a cab—if you can—and speed to it. After weeks of that sort of searching you become gun-shy. Why? Because "furnished" apartments are that in name only.

Eight miles from our downtown office we saw one that offered for a bed a straw mat covered with an old army blanket. It had no kitchen utensils, dining-room chairs, or light fixtures. It did have a lovely fountain on a vast second-floor terrace. Price: $250 a month.

The next step is to try your own advertisement. It must be specific as to your needs, for few apartments have iceboxes or telephones and getting a telephone takes from one to three years. Our ad brought us some leads. The first place we saw was on Avenida Atlantica, hanging right over Copacabana Beach. It was perfect—for midgets. The front room was so small you could light the landlady's cigaret (she sat across the room) without getting up. But size was the least drawback. With the apartment—at $225 a month—went the landlady's grandmother. Grandma would use one of the two bedrooms.

Another place had a waisthigh, turquoise-blue floor vase, filled with paper calla lilies, and a great brass Russian samovar for decorations. But it had no icebox, no bed linen, no telephone. The price: $250 a month—$750 in advance plus a deposit of $500—which we would probably not get back. Said the perspiring owner, "Sempre tem vento" (There's always a breeze). "Sempre?" we asked. "Sempre," she replied, daintily wiping her forehead.

This sort of thing went on for some six weeks and 50 apartments. The cheapest was offered at $225 and the most expensive at $425—four rooms. Often there was a demand for "key money," say $200, to speed negotiations. We saw only two apartments that had no dirty dishes in the sink. It was not that the maids were lazy. Rio as usual was suffering from a falta d'agua (water shortage). All but two had a bathtub of rusty water with a saucepan nearby for a dipper. Water ran briefly only at morning & night.

An advertisement in the English-language Brazil Herald brought results. The owner wanted no key money; he did not want to sell any furniture. For a big living room, dining room, bedroom and tiny guest room we thought it a gift at $300.