An action to remove 101 illegal buildings near the Stara Zagora “Lozenets” quarter is underway. In the months before it, 14 buildings were voluntarily removed; another 30 are awaiting a court decision under an appeal procedure. A total of 450 illegal Roma buildings in and near the quarter have been removed in recent years.
The Stara Zagora municipality in Bulgaria has started the demolition of more than a hundred “illegal” Roma houses. According to the municipality, there was no way that these houses could be regularised. A few families have apparently accepted the offers for municipal housing, but most have not.
Bad.
The Novo Mesto Municipality recently wanted to implement the decision of the building inspection and demolish illegal construction in the Roma settlement of Žabjak, but the police and the social work centre prevented it from doing so, Novo Mesto Mayor Gregor Macedoni revealed on TV Odmevi on Wednesday.
He also said that the state will have to decide whether we will have one legislation for everyone or not.
The police did not want to provide security during the demolition because not all legal conditions were met, and the Social Welfare Department opposed the demolition of one of the houses because a Roma family with several children lived in it and assessed that the demolition would cause additional social hardship that it would have to deal with.
President Gordana Siljanovska Davkova said at the “Conversations for Equality” event, on the theme “Roma Right to Housing,” organized by the Commission for Prevention and Protection against Discrimination, that despite the continued work of non-governmental and international organizations, the lives of Roma have not improved significantly.
Well, it will not unless the majority population changes their minds…
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.
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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.
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