A report on the challenges faced by Roma in finding housing in London has been published and there are two events that present its findings.
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1024254346527897&set=a.496198572666813
A report on the challenges faced by Roma in finding housing in London has been published and there are two events that present its findings.
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1024254346527897&set=a.496198572666813
In its annual report for 2024, the international human rights organization Amnesty International (AI) warns that thousands of people in Slovakia do not have adequate access to affordable housing. It criticizes the Slovak government for amendments to laws that, according to AI, have disproportionately restricted the rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression.
The organization also notes in the report the concealment of information about arms supplies to Israel, discrimination against Roma, and the unprotected rights of LGBTI persons.
The city of Veľký Šariš today began installing new unimo cells for residents who lost theirs in the tragic fire on March 19th with five victims. After today’s installation of the connection on Thursday, the unimocells (container housing units) will be connected to the existing networks, and the tenants should start moving into them from Friday.
It is in such housing units that the fire started. And nothing has really been done to prevent a further tragedy. But this is at least something.
A series of articles about the demolition of two villas in Rome belonging to “Sinti clans”. The houses were in violation of the building code and the legal proceedings go back to 2010.
As for the “Sinti clans”, well, there are a few doubts that these are “clans” and “Sinti”.
The mayor of the village of Torysa near Sabinov has ordered the residents of the settlement to remove illegal buildings. They are using the land on which their homes stand without any legal title. The government’s plenipotentiary for Roma communities Alexander Daško is looking for a systemic solution with the mayor of the village of Torysa. The demolition of 77 illegal dwellings would deprive four hundred Roma of a roof over their heads. Miriam Žiaková, director of the media department of the Office of the Plenipotentiary of the Government of the Slovak Republic for Roma Communities, informed about this.
Apparently, only 40 millions euros (out of the billion) of the Roma fund granted to Slovakia by the EU will be used for building houses for poor Roma. This is a ridiculously low sum of money.
Another one of those articles, but this time in Poland. A Roma “Palace” in Wrocław, Poland.
Unimo cells (Container houses) in the Roma ghetto in Žilina have their best years behind them. The city therefore wants to take action. It plans to repair a destroyed apartment building in the area. The Red Cross, which does not like segregation, is against it.
Michal Sivák, a gifted teacher and Rom has a job in a school in Bratislava. The problem: he can’t find an apartment as his applications are rejected because he is Rom.
He now says he won’t stay in education. What a waste.
A small town in Eastern Slovakia, Gelnice, want to build social housing in the town. This raises fears, as many of the social beneficiaries are Roma. And their housing is bad.
But then, no one wants them as neighbours.
Bad.
The case of a town who ceded some land on the promise that some social housing would be built for Roma from the town. Well, the developer got the land, but social housing is nowhere to be seen. Sad.
Not much this week in France The coutnry is more focused on its government (or potential lack thereof) than about Roma. Only one notable article about the closure of a larg Roma camp near Nantes.
Roma want to be treated with dignity as citizens and people – says Karolina Kwiatkowska, Communications and PR Director at the Central Council of Roma in Poland. A large number of Roma people live in Poznań. MOPR Poznań is trying to ensure that the integration between the Polish and Roma communities is smooth. One of the more difficult cases is the encampment on Lechicka Street.
In two neighborhoods of Fushë-Kosovo, Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian communities face a lack of basic services. However, activists from a non-governmental organization have launched a project aimed at transforming these settlements. The problem in this case is the properties whose owners appear to be Serbs.
Roma families were recently evicted from a building that was deemed insalubrious. Now the children are in the street and at risk to be out of school.
Bad.
Dozens of Bulgarian Roma families in Duisburg have received letters from the German municipal authorities informing them that they must vacate their apartments by mid-September 2024, according to the organisation “Stolipinovo in Europe”.
The local authorities also specify that the affected tenants are all tenants of Gertrudenstraße, Diesterwegstraße, Pestalozzistraße, Wilfriedstraße, Halskestraße and Wiesenstraße, who are in fact tenants of the company Ivere Property Management. It turns out that the company that owns the buildings, about fifty in total, has not paid electricity and water bills to the municipal property management company for months. It now intends to cut off the drinking water supply, which, according to the municipal authorities, makes the apartments unfit for consumption and leads to a mass eviction.
In a small room above the police station, right in the center of the colony on Coburgova Street in greater Trnava, two young people are trying to fight windmills. Despite all the hardships that work with Roma bring, Juraj Štofej and Jana Martinkovičová claim that they enjoy it.
Roma families protests in front of the Ribnič municipality began more than fifteen years ago, and their demands have always been the same, namely that the local authority should solve their housing problems.
The Union of Roma of Slovenia is now trying to calm the strained relations between the local authorities and the local Roma. Their representatives visited two Roma settlements in Ribnica yesterday and advised the local residents not to intensify their protest. They suggested that they first establish a dialogue with the mayor, with whom they had already agreed on a joint meeting.
The municipality of Velingrad has started a procedure to legalize the illegal buildings in the Roma neighbourhoods of the city. In Bulgaria, many houses in Roma settlements have never been registered and there are often no property documents.
The aim is to give the households who live in the houses there the right and the obligation to pay taxes. This will limit the illegal use of electricity and water.
Almost nothing this week in France about Rom. Just the story of the closure of a camp near Strasbourg. This story is typical of the way France deals with such things: 120 Roma settled near a highway access ramp in 2019. They slowly built a maeksift camp, and now, the camp has been closed for being insalubrious.
Frankly, it was the case since the beginning. Its inhabitants have yet to be permanetly re-located.