SDF: Discriminatory Housing Policies towards Serb Returnees

06 March 2007

The Serb Democratic Forum (SDF) issued a public statement yesterday, to protest the inadequate housing provisions for Serb returnees into areas under special care by the state. The manners and practice of housing provisions for Serb returnees, claims SDF, are cause of great concern and discriminatory.

The process is slow and uses facilities fully inadequate and inhabitable. According to SDF, Serb returnees, as a rule, receive housing that nobody wanted before them. These are either devastated or dislocated units, often both, lacking the minimal living conditions.

Furthermore, the facilities are substandard in terms of quality of construction works and lack even the most basic amenities. No care is taken about the quality or size of living space or equipping it with the basic and necessary amenities.

SDF believes that Serb returnees get the remains of the remains, usually in sub-par conditions. It is left to them to turn the houses they receive into basic housing facilities. Good examples of housing provisions for returnees are rather an exception to the general rule, which means that the following standards apply to the housing they get:

Devastated facility;
Dislocated facility;
Smaller size than legally prescribed;
Pressure on users to accept the offer;
Inexistent social or human sensibility;
Lacking programmes for repair of devastated housing units;
Lacking instruments to equip the units with most basic furniture (beds, cooker, table with chairs, sanitary appliances);
Difficulties in connecting the units to water and electricity supply networks.

SDF monitors the process of providing housing to Serb returnees with great care and attention. Its 15 field offices has registered over 40 cases of (failed) attempts to provide housing for returnees in Western Slavonia, Banija, Kordun, Lika and Dalmatia.