Why so many Serbians are being evicted from their homes

When Tatjana Aničić, a 45-year-old single mother from the Serbian capital Belgrade, went to answer a knock at her front door one summer day in 2017 she had no idea what misery was awaiting her. On her doorstep stood a bailiff, who had come to evict her and her infant son.

That’s when Tatjana discovered she’d become embroiled in a legal dispute between the small-time property developer who had sold her the apartment and its previous owner, who had arranged to return the flat to the developer in exchange for a different one. The deal had run into complications and the courts ordered that she be evicted and the apartment returned to its previous owner.

Tatjana’s case is hardly unique in Serbia, where right to housing laws have been slowly chipped away by successive governments. After transitioning from the socialist system that existed between 1945 and the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, a highly corrupt and utterly dysfunctional form of crony capitalism now rules the country and much of the Balkans. Bailiff services were privatised in 2011, and in late 2017 the last remaining right to housing protections were repealed. Forced evictions have been on the rise ever since and, according to figures from the chamber of bailiffs, over 3000 took place between 2011 and 2018, with the vast majority occurring after 2017. 

Luckily Tatjana couldn’t be evicted that day – the bailiffs hadn’t realised she had a small child: by law a social worker needed to be present. After trying and failing to get support from state institutions, she reached out to a group of activists known for fighting back against evictions.

Za Krov Nad Glavom, which translates to “For The Roof Over Our Heads” (or simply “Krov” [Roof] for short) is a coalition of around 10 different organisations. It’s best known for its tactic of showing up at evictions mob-handed and forming a human wall that physically blocks bailiffs from entering people’s homes.

Krov has a pool of around 100 volunteers that it calls on at short notice. Thanks to them, Tatjana is still in her home today, despite five subsequent attempts to remove her.

“The biggest problem with the evictions is that they’re unannounced, so we have to organise shifts at my place where people sleep over,” Tatjana tells me over Skype. We spoke that way because rising Covid-19 numbers in Belgrade made it difficult to meet. Since connecting with the group, she has also become an activist herself. “My flat is small, with only 40 square metres. Sometimes we have around 10 people sleeping on the floor, on the bed, wherever they can find some space,” she continues. 

Since first forming in 2017, Krov activists have thwarted around 230 evictions and the group is now active in three Serbian cities: Belgrade, Novi Sad and Subotica. Krov also campaigns for changes to Serbia’s right to housing laws, and its key demand is that the right to a home be enshrined in law. This would prevent bailiffs from evicting people if it’s the only home they have.

“We simply don’t have a welfare system that people can turn to to protect them from total ruin, even when they end up on the street,” says Ivan Zlatić, a leftwing political activist and one of the founders of Krov. “This is an entirely self-preservational measure, linked to the current circumstances in this country.” 

The reasons why people find themselves at risk of eviction in Serbia are varied. Some fall into debt as they struggle to keep up with utility bill payments in a country where living costs are high and a typical salary is around €300 a month. Others are ensnared by shady property developers who enact all sorts of scams, such as selling individual apartments to multiple buyers before hiding the cash away and declaring themselves bankrupt. 

Unsuspecting owners like Tatjana then find themselves threatened with eviction and are unable to pause the process while they defend themselves in court, as cases in Serbia’s Kafkaesque legal system can drag on for years. 

Tatjana tells us that she lives under constant stress. “I can never be sure if I’ll be able to enter my apartment when I come home,” she says flatly. “The bailiffs can follow me when I leave for work in the morning and enter my home when I’m not there. I’ve had to develop a new daily routine: when I wake up, first I check if there are any suspicious vehicles in the street. I can’t live a normal life because everything is organised around having a home to come back to. I don’t have the freedom to say ‘Okay, I’m taking my son on holiday for a week’. And if I ever do go anywhere, I have to get a neighbour or a friend to occupy my apartment because I have literally no idea when the bailiffs are going to show up.”

“I’m on good terms with my neighbours, so they’re my first line of defense,” Tatjana continues. “They brought me these beams that I can use to barricade my door and prevent the bailiffs from coming in while I wait for help to arrive,” she says, gesturing to a cluster of wooden beams on her balcony.

Krov is part of the ‘European action coalition for the right to housing and to the city’, a non-profit that brings together similar organisations from across the continent and helps them share tactics. But the group hasn’t received any support from official bodies. And when Krov tried to get a meeting with the EU delegation in Belgrade, the group’s efforts were ignored. All the support it gets comes from citizens who volunteer their time or make donations.

Krov’s tactics have attracted plenty of media attention and it has grown into one of the most prominent activist organisations in the country. Ivan says the group has been successful because people realise that “literally anybody” can end up homeless under the current system. 

The activist group’s  growing prominence has put pressure on the government to address the problem of evictions. A slight change to the law came into effect this year. Now, people can’t be evicted if they’re unable to pay their utility bills, as long as their debts don’t exceed €5000. But this does nothing to protect those who, like Tatjana, have fallen victim to malfeasance. New regulations also allow the police to issue on-the-spot fines of up to several thousand euros to anyone caught obstructing an eviction – a ruinous amount for most Serbians. Ivan says the measure is designed to deter Krov’s activists.

“[The authorities] were much more brutal back when we were weaker,” he says. “There were arrests and physical force and everything else two years ago. But when they began to change the law, they clearly intended to scare us away with fines. Fines are a more elegant way for the government to crush solidarity.”

Despite these draconian measures, Ivan says the authorities’ attempts to “criminalise solidarity” have failed. He claims Krov has figured out a loophole that has helped their activists evade fines - but is unwilling to go into exact details about that.

“There’s room for neither optimism nor pessimism,” Ivan concludes.