This paper is based on fieldwork undertaken in conjunction with Green My Favela, a land use restoration project that works with informal and vulnerable income sector residents to reclaim chronically degraded public areas by creating gardens inside the urban favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The paper reveals how government intervention policies employed in the lead up to the 2016 Olympics are destabilizing the fragile social fabric of the city’s largest favela, Rocinha, through military occupation and urbanization activities that threaten an already low and unstable human security threshold.