They will generate a great deal more homeless and poor, if history is any guide.

Rents in London are already extremely high - noone really poor cannot
afford them already. The only potentially damaging change would be
rise of the council tax - but so far it was promised that it won't
increase for the Olympics.


Salt Lake City promised 2500 units of low-cost houing; only 150 were delivered,
and prices for residential hotels increased 300%. The year before the Sydney
Olympics, tenant evictions increased by 400%. In Atlanta, Project Homeward
Bound gave the homeless a one-way ticket out of town before the Olympics began.
In Calgary, none of the promised low-cost housing units were delivered, only a
few university dorms.

All those places had quite low housing prices to start with.


Not Olympic-related, but Habitat 67, a low cost housing
project for the 1967 World Fail in Montreal, became luxury condominiums.

It was planned as "affordable" housing, not "cheap" housing. And it
was planned to be several sizes of what was originally build - thus
inflating the prices.


And how will London's £600 million security budget be spent? In racist
repressions, most likely.

Paranoid much?
Never gonna happen.


Laws were passed in Sydney to
allow increased surveillance, search and seizure, and military involvement in
law enforcement, just for the Olympics, but, surprise!, they are still in force.

Don't worry, UK is already surveillance society - nothing to change
here.


I lived in Montreal for the 1976 Olympics - great party, but the bill was only
finally paid off in 2002.

Yes, that were the most expensive Olympics in history, coupled with
very bad management - not typical for the most other Olympics.


I lived in Calgary for the 1988 Olympics - great
party but a $910 million debt, and no measurable long-term economic benefit.

Wrong! It turned a profit of around $150 million + significant
regeneration of the city.


Sydney was proud to host a "self-financing" Olympics in 2000 but still got
burdened with a $2.3 billion debt.

Pure speculation.
Did you read article by Maryann Abbs and really believed it?


And now London's TfL budget is being raided to finance construction costs, but
they also have to deliver better public transportation for the games? WTF?

Well, that was only speculation of journalist. The BBC one.