Little Empty Boxes
The long-term volunteers who work for I AM YOU, live in a cozy yet spacious house nestled in a sleepy neighborhood of Greek vacation homes. The affectionately named "Dream House", has a jagged and abstract silhouette that is a common architectural feature for the area, and can be attributed to the balconies and patios jutting out from every room, on every side of the house. From the large patio coming off the room I share with two other volunteers, you can see smattering of houses that litter the area as you look towards the beach. Looking directly ahead, there is a large, seemingly abandoned, maybe even unfinished house - whose design can only be described as a space age interpretation of classic greek columns. Looking slightly to the right of that oddity, there is a sentinel of twelve, two-story studios, all facing the same direction. Being surrounded by so many empty buildings is a combination of eerie and calming, depending on the time of day.
Yesterday, one of my roommates and I decided to take a walk over to the rows of two-story studios to take a closer look. Turning right out of the gate and winding around the corner, our neighbors dogs barked at us from their side of their gates while strays watched us stroll by, completely unfazed. The houses, which my housemate jokingly dubbed 'Dekapolis' (city of ten), are organized in three rows: the outer rows being four houses in perfect alignment and the middle row of two houses slightly off from each other. If you stand directly in front of the empty doorway of one of the units in the outer row, it creates a tunnel effect, where you can see directly through four identical houses in a row. Walking past a concrete gate, where space had been left for a large sign that signaled this housing project may have been intended as a hotel of sorts, my flatmate and I entered the first house farthest to the left. A trodden path through the overgrown grass, as well as a small collection of half-hearted tagging inside, indicated that this was the most frequently trespassed unit.
Walking into the unit, you enter a large room that comprises the first story. The completed electrical wiring and plumbing indicate where a kitchenette had been planned for, but never installed. To your immediate left, a rusty iron staircase brings you to the second floor, complete with a fully tiled bathroom and balcony that offers an off putting view of (and through) the other nine identical units. Aside from the design and layout, the strangest thing about these small flats was how seriously close they were to finished, before they were seemingly abandoned. Admittedly, I don't know much about construction, but the HGTV I have seen left me with the impression that appliances and outlet coverings were the final step before handing over the keys.
If it had been just this one collection of abandoned houses, it would be a remarkable oddity, and I could leave it at that. But on our daily drive up to Ritsona, we pass countless empty buildings, empty factories, empty storefronts... Even Ritsona occupies what used to be an abandoned Air Force base. The easy explanation is crisis - the 2008 financial meltdown hit Greece in especially devastating ways (for an overview, I recommend chapter 5 of Paul Mason's 2013 book, Why it's Still Kicking Off Everywhere), but the sheer volume of empty buildings and properties around Greece (including some of the stadiums and infrastructure built for the 2004 Athens Olympics), cannot be explained by financial crisis alone. An article in English I found from the Greek newspaper Ekathimerini quoted experts in saying there are close to 500,000 empty properties across Greece - including but not limited to newly built houses, commercial buildings, rentals, corporate buildings and old family homes.
With a brain drain causing young Greeks to leave for better work and education opportunities, the Greek practice of keeping properties within a family becomes less functional. In addition, it was explained to me that property taxes don't facilitate turnover - making it a reasonable option to leave buildings and homes empty until someone in the family is ready to deal with it. Unfortunately, if you leave buildings to stand for a rainy day, they get rained on. As they stand abandoned, you realize the full extent of what property ownership entails, and just leaving a building or a home depletes its value as an asset.
Learning that almost 500,000 buildings stand empty, unoccupied, and neglected is hard to swallow when you work in a refugee camp. I liken it to the nausea that comes over you when you learn of all the empty mansions in Kensington in London, and then encounter a dozen homeless people just on your commute. Last week, I helped some of my colleagues film interviews with residents of Ritsona refugee camp. Plumbers, electricians, people with families who are anxious to work live only a half hour away from this lot of ten empty, almost finished houses. Of course, it is more complicated than that, these are privately owned properties, and the Greek state, or the EU, or UNHCR cannot decide to give them to refugees. But there has to be some policy solution to take these decrepit houses, or even these brand new houses, off the hands of people who - by abandoning them and leaving them to crumble - don't seem to want them, and create opportunities for skilled workers to make an impact on their circumstances.
I'm not holding my breath, and I recognize the idealism in this proposal that has very solid structural obstacles to its realization. But we are probably at a point in political history where it is time to start thinking this way again.
Yesterday, one of my roommates and I decided to take a walk over to the rows of two-story studios to take a closer look. Turning right out of the gate and winding around the corner, our neighbors dogs barked at us from their side of their gates while strays watched us stroll by, completely unfazed. The houses, which my housemate jokingly dubbed 'Dekapolis' (city of ten), are organized in three rows: the outer rows being four houses in perfect alignment and the middle row of two houses slightly off from each other. If you stand directly in front of the empty doorway of one of the units in the outer row, it creates a tunnel effect, where you can see directly through four identical houses in a row. Walking past a concrete gate, where space had been left for a large sign that signaled this housing project may have been intended as a hotel of sorts, my flatmate and I entered the first house farthest to the left. A trodden path through the overgrown grass, as well as a small collection of half-hearted tagging inside, indicated that this was the most frequently trespassed unit.
Walking into the unit, you enter a large room that comprises the first story. The completed electrical wiring and plumbing indicate where a kitchenette had been planned for, but never installed. To your immediate left, a rusty iron staircase brings you to the second floor, complete with a fully tiled bathroom and balcony that offers an off putting view of (and through) the other nine identical units. Aside from the design and layout, the strangest thing about these small flats was how seriously close they were to finished, before they were seemingly abandoned. Admittedly, I don't know much about construction, but the HGTV I have seen left me with the impression that appliances and outlet coverings were the final step before handing over the keys.
If it had been just this one collection of abandoned houses, it would be a remarkable oddity, and I could leave it at that. But on our daily drive up to Ritsona, we pass countless empty buildings, empty factories, empty storefronts... Even Ritsona occupies what used to be an abandoned Air Force base. The easy explanation is crisis - the 2008 financial meltdown hit Greece in especially devastating ways (for an overview, I recommend chapter 5 of Paul Mason's 2013 book, Why it's Still Kicking Off Everywhere), but the sheer volume of empty buildings and properties around Greece (including some of the stadiums and infrastructure built for the 2004 Athens Olympics), cannot be explained by financial crisis alone. An article in English I found from the Greek newspaper Ekathimerini quoted experts in saying there are close to 500,000 empty properties across Greece - including but not limited to newly built houses, commercial buildings, rentals, corporate buildings and old family homes.
With a brain drain causing young Greeks to leave for better work and education opportunities, the Greek practice of keeping properties within a family becomes less functional. In addition, it was explained to me that property taxes don't facilitate turnover - making it a reasonable option to leave buildings and homes empty until someone in the family is ready to deal with it. Unfortunately, if you leave buildings to stand for a rainy day, they get rained on. As they stand abandoned, you realize the full extent of what property ownership entails, and just leaving a building or a home depletes its value as an asset.Learning that almost 500,000 buildings stand empty, unoccupied, and neglected is hard to swallow when you work in a refugee camp. I liken it to the nausea that comes over you when you learn of all the empty mansions in Kensington in London, and then encounter a dozen homeless people just on your commute. Last week, I helped some of my colleagues film interviews with residents of Ritsona refugee camp. Plumbers, electricians, people with families who are anxious to work live only a half hour away from this lot of ten empty, almost finished houses. Of course, it is more complicated than that, these are privately owned properties, and the Greek state, or the EU, or UNHCR cannot decide to give them to refugees. But there has to be some policy solution to take these decrepit houses, or even these brand new houses, off the hands of people who - by abandoning them and leaving them to crumble - don't seem to want them, and create opportunities for skilled workers to make an impact on their circumstances.
I'm not holding my breath, and I recognize the idealism in this proposal that has very solid structural obstacles to its realization. But we are probably at a point in political history where it is time to start thinking this way again.
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