Connect to share and comment A neighborhood sits on dangerous
methane-filled ground. Half the residents left. The others have
refused. SAO PAULO, Brazil — Construction on this working-class
neighborhood stopped before doors and windows were installed in
the concrete block houses, but not before the city put up bright
blue street signs. The signs — and the silence in a crowded,
turbulent 11 million person city — recall a ghost town in the
Old West. The only thing missing is tumbleweeds. That’s what you
get, it turns out, when you build housing for about 60 first-
time homeowners on a former garbage dump that wasn’t thoroughly
tested for methane gas levels. The would-be homeowners provided
20 hours of weekly labor and a monthly payment to help with
construction overseen by the city, with the expectation of home
ownership at the end. Instead they are still living in rented
homes. Just outside the fences, dozens more families live in
houses that were completed before the methane level was
discovered. They have ref