Czech residential hotel with 200 tenants goes second day without power

A residential hotel on Zelená Street in the Czech town of Děčín, which became a target of anti-Romani marches in the summer of 2014, has been without electricity since yesterday after several fuses blew. Around 200 occupants live in the building, a large portion of whom are children.

"It’s rather hard to communicate with the owner. When we asked him when it would be repaired, he didn’t answer. There are young children here, people with disabilities, people who are ill, we can’t make tea or turn on the heat. This is about our health," are some of the comments made by the tenants.

According to David Leš, the manager of the residential hotel, the fuses blew out because the occupants of several units were illegally accessing power. "This was 16 fuses. It will be necessary to redesign it. The repairs will happen on Wednesday, an electrician will visit the building," he told news server Romea.cz.

The tenants are rather skeptical of that statement. "The question is whether such a deadline is realistic. The building has the original wiring from the 1970s, it may turn out that it will be necessary to install new wiring. Some people here also believe he’s just making that promise to keep us quiet. They wonder why those responsible didn’t call an electrician immediately, it’s freezing outside and it’s terribly cold in the apartments," a representative of the Konexe organization told Romea.cz directly from the scene.

The owner of the residential hotel is Petr Trabalka, who also owns the infamous Hotel Freedom in the Krásné Březno quarter of Ústí nad Labem. Recently he was leasing cellar spaces not permitted for residence to his tenants as a living space there.

The occupants of Trabalka’s building in Děčín have long grappled with bedbugs. "We sleep on the floor, we had to get rid of everything because of the bedbugs," one tenant confirmed to news server Romea.cz.

"We go to work, we pay rent, we have no debts – and we live in these conditions," the tenant said. "It would be really hard to find housing anywhere else, though."