This project documents Favela do Moinho, the last remaining favela in central São Paulo, located between Campos Elíseos and Bom Retiro. Today, the community faces the threat of eviction as part of an urban redevelopment project led by the São Paulo state government, which includes relocating its administrative headquarters to the city center and creating Moinho Park.

Founded in the late 1980s on land left behind after the closure of the former Moinho Central flour mill, the favela grew amid a housing crisis, abandoned railway infrastructure, and the lack of public housing policies in the city center. Over more than three decades, approximately 800 families have built a community shaped by work, mutual support, and social ties, despite precarious living conditions and limited institutional recognition.

The photographs were taken in April 2025, when the first eviction operations began. As the process intensified, residents organized demonstrations demanding dialogue and denouncing the violence of the removals. Railway disruptions, police surveillance, restricted mobility, and interruptions to essential services exposed the growing tensions and uncertainty affecting everyday life in the community.

Through this work, Favela do Moinho emerges not as an obstacle to urban development, but as a living territory with its own history, relationships, and forms of belonging. The project examines the social consequences of urban “revitalization” and the displacement of vulnerable populations, raising a fundamental question about the right to housing and permanence: who has the right to remain in the city center?

São Paulo 2025