Legalising the Tabor?
19 January 2015
By Stephan Muller and Darya Alekseeva
It’s not news that evictions are one of the most common problem Roma face throughout Europe and at the ERRC we have been tackling this problem for a long time by means of research, advocacy and litigation. And the lessons learned from these many years of work are several; the main one is that in many instances evictions can be stopped, postponed, or re-negotiated, but it is very rare that they can be prevented from re-occurring, often in the same place with the same people. That inevitably made us think that rather than immediately reacting to evictions we need to address the root cause of the problem, which obviously differs from country to country and requires different approaches depending on the individual circumstances.
We travelled to Uzhhorod in western Ukraine in early December with 2 aims : 1) to hold a seminar on the Roma Inclusion Strategy currently being implemented in Ukraine and 2) to assess the results of the legalisation project we started in 2013 together with the local ERRC lawyer/monitor. The project is a pilot project for the ERRC in an attempt to address the root cause of evictions and to prevent them before they occur rather than react to them as they happen. The attempt proved to be successful and in January 2015 we created the first Roma condominium in Uzhhorod. Several flats in the house where 25 people currently live have been privatised and came under the ownership of their inhabitants. This condominium, which in essence means common ownership of the individual owners of the flats over the house, gives people an opportunity to legally apply for some support from the municipality for reconstruction – something which they have not been able to do before. It will mean quite a change in people‘s lives.
The situation in the tabor where we are currently leading a project on legalisation is very similar to many other settlements elsewhere in Ukraine or Europe. Once we arrived at the settlement we witnessed the unfortunate pattern known far too well to us. Where the asphalt road stops, the mud road and the Tabor begins. As if Roma were not worth the asphalt. In summer, it is a dust road, now at the beginning of the unusually warm December it is a mud road. Children are playing on the streets and dozens of dogs are strolling around. We are looking for house No 14 a house which has been recently legalised. It looks like most other houses - a wooden barrack extended with wooden shacks to accommodate more people.
A few decades ago, soldiers were accommodated in these wooden barracks. Up to the end of the Seventies, a large Romani community was living on a peninsula outside of the city limits of Uzhorod, but one day they were told to leave their settlement and were moved to the wooden barracks the soldiers had left empty. For more than 30 years they have been told that this is temporary and soon permanent housing solution will be found. Ten years under socialism, more than twenty years under democracy, and the situation is the same as it has been 30 years ago, and nothing has changed.
In the meantime the condition of the wooden barracks started to get worse, and on the other hand, the settlement got larger. The wooden barracks received extensions and new makeshift barracks were built. Most of the extensions of the barracks look shaky and it is difficult to imagine that they would survive heavy storms.
More than 700 people are currently residing in the settlement but only a few have documents and are registered at the place where they actually live. The houses are numbered, but there are no street names. Most houses are separated into small flats, in general with one room only for a large family. The barracks have access to electricity, a public well provides water, but there is no sewerage. Only a few have a job. Under socialism most of them worked in one of the factories behind the settlement. Now the main sources of income are temporary jobs and social benefits (for those who are eligible) Children go to a nearby school or a nearby kindergarten with hardly any “white” children. The Roma even started to build their own church. Relations with “white” neighbours are tense, but free of incidents. The street is divided in two – one side is inhabited by Roma, the other one by “white” people, windows facing each other.
Social housing, which could be a solution to all the people living in the settlement, is a myth to them as most of them do not qualify and do not have personal documents. The municipality in turn is trying to get rid of its property. It appears it just wants to maintain the city administration, run schools, medical services and communal services, but does not want to be responsible for housing stocks anymore.
Having assessed the situation and having consulted representatives of the community, and with the support of the ERRC monitor in Ukraine, the ERRC came to a conclusion that one of the solutions would be to legalise the flats and apply for a condominium.
House No 14 with its four flats is the first one to try the idea of creating a condominium. The attempt proved to be successful and 25 people are now the owners and cannot be evicted. The first thing that comes to mind is the security in their lives.
But we have to answer further questions and think of future steps. The poor living conditions are still there, many families continue to live in houses which they don’t have any legal titles to, and the nearest hospital, school, or shops are several kilometres away. The questions we asked ourselves at the beginning of the process - do we support legalisation of the quite poor, abandoned and very often segregated settlements or do we continue lobbying for relocation of these families running the risk of receiving an eviction notice any day - seem to be resolved.
In this particular situation in Ukraine we see legalisation as a protection against evictions which would leave the families homeless, since it is extremely unlikely that alternative accommodation would be available. But we are also aware that the approach to legalisation and the need to carry it out should be assessed individually taking into account a wide range of circumstances in each particular settlement. We at the ERRC hope that the first successful legalisation project will encourage more community members to apply and that gradually the majority of the inhabitants of the houses in the settlements will become the legal owners of their dwellings. However, in order to be sustainable, the privatisation has to be followed by more activities. The structures of the houses and the infrastructure have to be improved so that they meet basic requirements such as access to water and a sewerage system for all houses and asphalted streets in the settlement.
Ownership creates ownership. When it is my house, I invest more and take more care. Turning the wooden barracks and the attached wooden shacks into improved housing with concrete walls is more likely, if I am the owner and I know that I cannot be evicted anytime. When I take more care of my house, it is more likely that I will take more care of the open space around it, and of the community itself.
The community should be empowered to actively participate in determining their life in the neighbourhood and communication with the “white” neighbours has to be improved in order to make those neighbours realise that investing in the Romani neighbourhood is a win-win situation. The ERRC has learned in the last years that it has to follow its successful interventions up more closely, meaning that it has to work more with Roma communities in order to achieve sustainable results. A successful judgment, a change in policy or the adoption of a new law is just the beginning of the process. We have to empower Roma themselves to make use of these changes and continue to strive for a better life.
