The very last Romani family still living at the housing estate on Kovářská Street in the Czech town of Varnsdorf has now ended up homeless. The owner of the apartment units where they had been living evicted them at the beginning of January.
The family of five will not be allowed to lease a municipally-owned apartment despite previous promises by Mayor Roland Solloch (ANO) to rent them one, even though both the father and mother of the family have been employed by the town itself for several years and cannot be considered rent defaulters by any stretch of the imagination. Some of the units on Kovářská Street, which has a bad reputation among locals, were bought during the second half of 2020 by the entrepreneur Lukáš Rak, who reportedly wants to reconstruct the prefabricated apartment buildings.
Rak is the CEO of the Butterfly Factory s.r.o. company, which according to property records currently owns many units in that locality. During the summer he evicted tenants who were behind on their rent and utilities payments, and during the autumn he gradually also evicted even those who owed no such debts.
