Romani tenants who have been evacuated from an unsuitable building on Beneše Lounského street in the Czech town of Ústí nad Labem have now left their temporary housing in the gym of the primary school in the Předlice quarter and have moved into a residential hotel in the Krásné Březno neighborhood. The 36 tenants, 27 of whom are children, were initially meant to move directly into the residential hotel after being evicted, but rejected it as untidy at the time. News server iDNES.cz reports that a female evacuee says the residential hotel has now been cleaned up and painted.
Miroslav Brož, spokesperson for the Konexe association, told news server Romea.cz that "The Konexe civic association protests the evacuation of these families into the usurious residential hotel. The conditions there may be even worse that the ones in building no. 106, from which these families were first evacuated."
"The people being evacuated have no opportunity to contribute to or influence the solutions being designed for them by the so-called town hall crisis team, which first evacuated them against their will into the gym and then into the residential hotel. The Romani evacuees are never invited to the negotiations being held about their fate," Brož added.
The People in Need (Člověk v tísni) organization is helping the town hall to resolve the situation at the scene. "I have no idea how long the people will stay in the residential hotel," Vít Kučera of PIN told news server Romea.cz. "Our social worker is doing her best to find them appropriate rental housing, but the situation is complicated by the size of the families and enormous media pressure. However, their evacuation from the building in which they were living was the only solution, because it would have been very dangerous for them to remain there."
