A man takes a child and puts it on the tracker in which there is some cardboard, they started collecting secondary raw materials. Next to them is a house in front of which women are sitting decom. It's lunch time, scones are on the table ready to be baked, a bottle of oil, flour and that's it.
One woman who was sitting there temporarily came to her neighbors because her house burned down in a fire at the beginning of August in an informal Romani in the Antena settlement on Bežanijska kosa. The cause of the fire is unknown.
The woman with whom the reporter is speaking says that they sat on the street for two weeks and did not receive any help, so everyone coped as best they could. Her brother built a room for her, but that room was not enough for her and the children, and she had to manage further.
Seven families were affected by the fire, three of which are relatives living in Kosovo and four living in Belgrade. 34 people remained on the street, including 22 children.
Senior legal adviser in the Initiative for Economic and Social Rights A 11, Nađa Marković, tells "Vreme" that the Secretariat for Social Protection and the Municipality of Novi Belgrade were on the ground at the same time as the Initiative A 11 - "they listed the families whose houses burned down and in that was basically it. It was said that it will be seen what happens for one-time benefits, what happens for accommodation".
He further indicates that the Municipality only provided some sandwiches.
There is, but there is no living space
"We, as Initiative A 11, submitted requests for one-time aid to the Center for Social Work New Belgrade and we submitted collective letters to the Secretariat for Social Protection and the Secretariat for Property and Legal Affairs to ask them about housing care for these families, which remains the most urgent. We also submitted individual requests on behalf of all seven households in the city. "We only received a response from the Secretariat for Social Protection to our letters that it is not competent, and from the Secretariat for Property and Legal Affairs that the housing capacities of the City of Belgrade are limited and full," says Marković.
Our interlocutor states that home accommodation was offered to a mother with a child, but that was no solution because there are more children in that family, and the second reason is that there were many more children in other families, so the woman refused this "solution".
In the collective memo, Initiative A 11, according to Nađa Marković, listed some rooms where families could be accommodated, for example, rooms used for winter accommodation for people in a situation of homelessness.
"We had examples that we know were free at the time that would have been able to accommodate so many individuals." However, the City only stated that each building has its own purpose and that it simply considers it a filled space. Everything stopped there, and nothing has happened since then," emphasizes Marković.
One-time assistance only for families residing in Belgrade
The question that remains, says Marković, is what happens to the three families who reside in Kosovo because they could not submit a request for them considering that the institutions in Belgrade are not competent.
Families residing in Beorgad did receive one-time assistance, but those originally from Kosovo did not receive that either.
That's why some found accommodation, some even returned to Kosovo.
"Another thing is that the City has no less responsibility - they were obliged by law to help them," emphasizes Marković and further states that it does not seem that anyone from the City will deal with this problem.
According to the Law on housing and maintenance of buildings, Article 103 stipulates that housing care is temporary accommodation of a person until his housing needs are resolved, especially a person whose apartment or family house has been damaged or destroyed due to natural or other natural disasters, and beneficiaries of housing support are defined in Article 89 of this law - which would mean that help to these people is legally guaranteed.
The Secretariat for Social Protection and the Secretariat for Property and Legal Affairs did not respond to Vremen's inquiries.
Someone's home or "municipal waste"
The municipality of Novi Beograd tried to forcibly evict the informal Roma settlement Antena on Bežanijska kosa in March last year.
In this settlement, according to writing Initiative A 11, is home to about forty families, Roma men and women, who are mostly internally displaced from Kosovo and who, due to extreme poverty, have no possibility to exercise their right to adequate housing.
"The city wanted to demolish some two shacks that they listed as municipal waste, but they are certainly someone's homes, not municipal waste," Marković points out.
That is why Initiative A 11 asked the European Court for Human Rights to issue a temporary measure to prevent the demolition of the houses of the residents of the settlement and their homelessness.
After initiating the procedure for the imposition of a temporary measure by the European Court of Human Rights, the City Municipality of Novi Beograd annulled the previously adopted decisions ordering the demolition of these houses.
Marković says that this is a problem because it concerns very vulnerable social categories that can find themselves at risk of homelessness because they are people whose health, financial status, and everything are already at risk.
"Their existence is really threatened because they really have nowhere to go, and that's something that should somehow be remembered during some future potential displacements," concludes our interlocutor.
