By Stefanos Evripidou
OVERCROWDED, rundown houses filled with foreign students and workers are raising serious health concerns for people living within the Nicosia city walls.
According to one parking attendant, the situation has got so bad that tenants are filling buckets with human waste and dumping them on his parking lot.
“They use buckets as toilets and empty them everywhere,” said Andreas Zimarides, manager of a small parking lot on the corner of Vassiliou Voulgaroctonou and Arsinois Streets. “They cram into these houses, sometimes 30 in each one. When they are too many for one bathroom, they deposit all their waste, human and rubbish, on my parking lot, bringing an onslaught of flies,” he said.
The row of dilapidated houses and shop windows on Arsinois Street in the old town has become a popular location for Asian workers and students, given its centrality and proximity to other immigrant communities.
However, the houses are in a serious state of decline. Many share damp floors and decaying walls and as the tenants bring in more tenants to cut the rent, living conditions get worse and worse.
One three-bedroom house held 30 tenants, while the landlord had only rented it out to 10. Another house had 10 tenants sharing one bathroom, leading to many showering in the yard with a hosepipe or urinating in buckets and emptying them outside. Between the houses, broken-down and abandoned shops are used as sleeping quarters.
Petros Kassabis sublets one of the houses to Asian workers and students. “I book four in a room but then they bring all their mates. Once we found 60 in one house,” said Kassabis. “They say they are just visiting. It doesn’t matter how many times I kick them out they always bring more. The girls are much cleaner than the boys though,” he added.
Head of Health Services for Nicosia Municipality, Philipos Petsas, told the Cyprus Mail that he was aware of the situation and had informed Immigration of the huge number of foreigners on the street. “Immigration will be investigating whether there are any illegal immigrants on the street,” he said.
“Meanwhile, the Health Services have already visited the houses and instructed tenants to take greater hygiene measures. We have also warned the owner to adopt a more supervisory role,” said Petsas.
Asked what action could be taken by the Health Services if the problem continued, Petsas replied: “We can only go after the owner if he fails to perform his duties, like not provide a sewage disposal system in working order. But if the tenants do not take heed of our hygiene measures, then our only option is to take them to court for ‘nuisance’. This is not so simple because we have to provide evidence that there was a danger to the health and safety of neighbours.”
According to Petsas, no housing law exists to limit the number of people in a house. “If they continue to create conditions that endanger the health of others, then it is our obligation to take measures,” he said.
Emilios Emmanuel is the owner of the block of houses on that corner, as well as owning a substantial amount of property within the Nicosia walls. He held a different view on the situation.
“I encourage foreigners to rent in the old town as a direct reaction to the municipality’s behaviour. Now, it has reached the point where they are dropping their waste in the streets. This is a problem for the whole of old Nicosia,” he said. Emmanuel applied for planning permission in 2001 to transform the block into a hotel with two restaurants.
According to Emmanuel, the municipality refused to review his application, citing a moratorium imposed that year on new nightclubs and eateries. “They won’t let me redo the houses because I will be adding restaurants. But they are letting nightclubs open up all over the old town. Some are even scared that I want to open up a bordello,” he added. “Nobody seems to care about the state of the old town. I want to do something about it but they won’t let me.”
The property owner maintained that until he could get planning permission to build on his properties, he would continue to rent to non-Cypriots.
“Cypriots are not interested in renting in the old town. They don’t see the value of it. And once they rent for more than a month, they become ‘sitting tenants’, meaning it is impossible to get rid of them,” he said. “I spent over £100,000 on compensation for Cypriot tenants to leave that block because I thought they were going to grant me planning permission. And they didn’t.”
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
