It began with roof tiles sliding off in the night. Within days, Dmitry Abzhan's family home was being upended in slow-motion by the earth beneath it.

The cause was a landslide triggered by trucks illegally dumping waste on a slope above their street — part of the preparations for the Winter Olympics in Sochi that are set to begin on February 7.

A court ruled that Abzhan was entitled to compensation, but the order was never executed, leaving him and his extended family struggling to live in a dilapidated, crooked, and often dizzying home. Abzhan, 27, jokes laconically that it is like being "in outer space," adding that his appeals to the authorities have gone unanswered.

“There has been no action whatsoever. We don’t know what to do, who we should appeal to and what more we can do. The children are getting older. There should be some future ahead, but the fact is we — local residents who were born here and grew up here — have effectively been left homeless,” Abzhan says.

Welcome to the wrong side of the tracks in the Olympic city of Sochi. Preparations for the games have cost a record $51 billion. But beyond throwing up shiny stadiums and ski lifts, Sochi's makeover has turned the lives of hundreds of residents like Abzhan upside-down — sometimes almost literally — in recent years.

The gulf between Sochi's winners and losers is particularly stark on the road linking the seacoast to the showcase ski resort at Krasnaya Polyana, where many Olympic events are due to take place. The 50-kilometer car and rail link cost more than $8 billion to build, prompting the Russian-language edition of "Esquire" magazine to quip that for that price tag, it could have been paved with shredded Louis Vuitton handbags, caviar, or foie gras.

Less than a kilometer from the road, the village of Akhshtyr has been shrouded in thick white dust since preparation for the games kicked off. The wells here have run dry. There is no gas. Residents can’t sell their homegrown persimmons because they are blanketed in cement dust. Moreover, the road to Krasnaya Polyana has cut off Akhshtyr's access to public transportation to Sochi's southern Adler district. The authorities never built an access road to the new highway, as locals say they promised.

This is a major concern for people like Viktor Kolenin, a 65-year-old pensioner who is disabled due to his work following the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear disaster. He worries about how he will get to the hospital and about the strain on his lungs from the plumes of construction dust.

Another local, 53-year-old Yelena Runovich, says she had to give up her job in order to walk her young daughter back from school through construction sites and across two highways.

Kolenin, Runovich, and other villagers recently gathered around an old roadside well in Akhshtyr and spoke to RFE/RL about the impact of the Olympic bid on their community.

“You have to ask: Why is it that some people get everything and for the remaining residents there is nothing?” Runovich says.

“This was the cleanest village in the Adler region of Greater Sochi. They've turned it into a garbage dump. The administration knows this perfectly well — and not a peep from them,” Kolenin says.

Back on Baku Street where Abzhan lives, many also blame the local authorities. Next-door neighbor Polina Kalayzhan, 85, lives in a house that tilts precariously and is slowly sliding down the hill. She lives there with nine relatives including her 89-year old husband. They also are due compensation, but seem powerless to obtain it.

“We wrote to [President Vladimir] Putin, wrote to [Prime Minister Dmitry] Medvedev, wrote to the Krasnodar [administration], we've written everywhere,” Kalayzhan says. “They reply: Let the local authorities deal with it. But the local authorities don't pay any attention. They say we can't help you."

Across the city, the massive scale of construction has caused regular electricity cuts that are often extended beyond their planned duration. One blogger, Olga Agalakova, wrote that the moon in Sochi has taken on a new significance.

“It's not just the moon!” she says. “It’s our main source of light in Izmailovsk and Semyonovsk! It’s already been two months every day that they have turned off the electricity for twelve hours or more. Sometimes, for two days!”

Some look forward to the return of regular electricity and dust-free air after the Olympics. But those like Abzhan, who have suffered material damages, fear their plights will be forgotten.

“In fairness, we didn’t just come here for a couple of days — we were born here, grew up here. And not just us. Our grandfathers and great grandfathers were born and grew up here. And we end up homeless and can’t do anything about it,” Abzhan says.

“And it’s not our fault. In ways, we are happy that the Olympics are here — it’s the Olympics after all and they built some roads and all that. But just don’t insult the local people. If you take something away, then give them something back. And don’t destroy things, leaving locals homeless, hold the Olympics and then leave, forgetting about everything.”

Source: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty