The Olympics Devastate Host Cities and Need a Permanent Location

The Olympics are broken. Nowhere is this clearer than in Tokyo, where polls have indicated more than 80% of Japanese citizens oppose the upcoming Summer Games and the Japanese government has declared a state of emergency. As of late May, just 3.7% of the population had received at least one dose of the vaccine and Japan is grappling with a “fourth wave” of COVID-19. There’s never been an Olympics so deeply unpopular with a host city — and so dangerous to hold — and yet by all indications, the Tokyo Games will go on as scheduled.

Even without a pandemic, the impact of the Olympics on host cities has become too devastating to ignore.

It’s hard not to feel the hype during an Olympics. Held every two years since 1992, it’s an absorbing competitive spectacle featuring the world’s best athletes. Plus, female athletes, disabled athletes, and athletes from sports who typically don’t get media coverage are given a well-deserved and long overdue turn in the spotlight.

“The Olympics are very popular, as long as they’re not happening in your city,” political scientist Jules Boykoff, who has written extensively on the Olympics, explains to Teen Vogue. “While the Olympics tend to bring out the very best in athletes, they also tend to bring out the very worst in host cities.”

In host cities, the games have displaced residents, sped up gentrification, and increased policing and the militarization of the public sphere. Before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, 1.5 million Chinese residents were evicted from their homes. In preparation for Rio 2016, countless neighborhoods were destroyed — an estimated 60,000 Brazilians lost their homes — to make way for Olympics infrastructure. Ahead of the Tokyo Games this summer, some residents of the Kasumigaoka apartment complex in Tokyo were evicted to make way for the main stadium. Communities across the city saw “severe gentrification,” according to Ayako Yoshida, a member of  Hangorin No Kai, the Japanese anti-Olympics activist organization. “Under the banner of so-called neighborhood ‘redevelopment,’ we witnessed private corporations kick people out of their homes and transform neighborhoods for their own profit,” she told Teen Vogue.

Seven years out from the 2028 Games in Los Angeles, the local community is already seeing this pattern of displacement and gentrification. “For the Olympics, [what’s] going to drive people to be displaced out of rent-stabilized housing is the construction of new hotels, which are being built in now-gentrifying neighborhoods around Olympic sites in downtown and South L.A., which are predominantly communities of color,” NOlympics L.A. organizer Gia Lappe, tells Teen Vogue. Lappe points to the Ellis Act, a loophole in state law, that allows landlords of affordable housing to evict tenants if the landlord is planning to “change the use” of the building, i.e., make that property a hotel. She speculated that displacement, like the recent clearing of a homeless community in Echo Park Lake, is happening now in preparation for the Games.

When reached for comment, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) told Teen Vogue that their sustainability efforts include only building new sports venues in host cities that don’t have them. “If a host does not need a new permanent sports venue, its leaders will not be asked to build one,” they said. “This has significantly reduced the costs of organizing the Games while ensuring their fundamental values of universality and diversity.” When asked about the redevelopment ahead of Tokyo and Los Angeles Games, specifically, they referred Teen Vogue to the local city organizing committees, stating, “LA28 games are a no-build Games with a master plan specifically designed to use the city’s existing sports venues. There’s no connection to Echo Park.”

Yet, every two years in cities all across the world, poor communities seem to pay the price of hosting the Olympic Games. As Yoshida explained, “The sacrifice will be burdened by everyday people, who are often poor or in the most vulnerable position in society.”

A clear solution to the disastrous impact of the Games is a permanent location. On an emotional level, athletes may not care where the Olympic Games are held — they simply want to compete in the Olympics. And there could be something meaningful about competing in the same spot where champions played years before.

It makes sense economically too as the Games have evolved into a money-losing endeavor for host cities. Economist Victor A. Matheson told Teen Vogue that “no possible understanding of the benefits could possibly cover the cost of a typical Olympic Games these days.” In a study published in 2016, Matheson and coauthor Robert A. Baade found that hosting the Olympics is not economically viable for most cities. Indeed, the Tokyo Olympics, which originally anticipated would cost about $7 billion in 2013, was on track in 2018 to cost upwards of $30 billion, according to the Washington Post — and that was prior to COVID. “This was at least a $25 billion debacle, even before COVID added to the problems,” Matheson said. There will be a significant one-time investment with a permanent location as the necessary athletic infrastructure is constructed and then continued upkeep cost, which would be much lower, he explained.

Even if the Olympics doesn’t find one permanent home, rotating between a few locations would still be a more sensible alternative. A study published last month in the journal Nature Sustainability proposed a few options to improve the Games: downsizing the event, having the IOC implement an independent body to monitor its promise of “sustainability,” or, critically, rotating the event among the same few cities, so the Games “could be hosted with minimal social and ecological disruption and at minimal cost.” Imagine that the infrastructure built in Olympic cities didn’t go to ruin, but was reused again and again. Imagine an eco-friendly Olympic Village ready to host athletes and coaches, and serving as dorms and temporary housing in the Games’ off years.

It’s easy to imagine, but it all rests on the IOC, an organization that many critics see as having no incentive to reform. The IOC was founded in 1894 under the name the Olympic Congress. According to a 2015 article in the European Journal of International Relations, the non-governmental sports organization has no real oversight, and seemingly, no pressure to change the way things have been done. Some of its members have reportedly benefited greatly from the Olympics. In 2014, Slate described the IOC as having “diva-like demands for luxury treatment,” including what Norweigian media reported as the creation of separate lanes on public roads, ceremonial greetings, and more, prompting the Norwegian capital of Oslo to drop its bid for the 2022 Games. The IOC’s members include royalty, corporate executives, and many wealthy individuals, who are likely accustomed to receiving lavish benefits.

“Fundamentally, their job is a very enviable one: They own the rights to a sporting event that draws billions of eyeballs every two years. And yet, they're actually responsible for very little,” explained Chris Dempsey, who co-led the No Boston Olympics movement. Though it may be the only sustainable way to continue holding an Olympics, Dempsey doesn’t believe the IOC will ever move to a permanent location. He theorized they simply risk losing too much money in broadcasting rights.

Boykoff takes a similarly pessimistic view on any possibility of IOC reform. “The International Olympic Committee has to be one of the most pervasive, yet least accountable organizations in the world, sports-related or otherwise,” he said. “Until we get [some] hook where we can hold them accountable, it’s going to be difficult to change. That means we're only left with the athletes to stand up and speak out, break rules, and maybe even challenge the Olympic system, the corporate sponsors to back out, or the broadcasters to say, ‘This isn't worth our money anymore.’”

All eyes are on Tokyo this summer. “If they go horribly wrong,” Boykoff says, “that might open up more space for possible reform.”

After the end of the first modern Olympics in Athens in 1896, the Greek king viewed it as such a success that he asked the IOC to consider making Athens the permanent home of the Olympics. In a toast, King George I of Greece said he hoped “foreigners… will remember Athens as the peaceful meeting place of all nations, as the tranquil and permanent seat of the Olympic Games.” Soon after, the U.S. Olympic team at the time endorsed his idea, writing that due to the existing infrastructure, Greece’s “competent” administration, and the historical legacy, “these games should never be removed from their native soil.” If only the world had listened.

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Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue