Apartment Owners: The Right to a Roof Over One’s Head Yes, But Not at Someone Else’s Expense

Everyone has the right to a roof over their head, but not at someone else’s expense, stated the association Ownership and Possession on Thursday in response to the protest of members of the Croatian Association of Tenants in St. Mark’s Square against the proposed amendment to the Law on Lease of Apartments, the passing of which, they claim, would result in the eviction and displacement of more than four thousand families in Croatia.

The amendments to the Law on Lease, which the Croatian Parliament will discuss today, are an important step in addressing the status of disenfranchised apartment owners, who have been unable to use their private property for 70 years, the apartment owners gathered in the association Ownership and Possession stated in a press release.

Despite the shortcomings, they expect that the new law will save millions of kuna of taxpayers’ money that would have been spent on compensating actual owners.

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Apartments in City Centers

The reason for this is that protected tenants live in their properties, paying rent of only about a hundred kuna per month, or 2.4 kuna per square meter, for apartments that are mostly located in the city centers. At the same time, the actual owners of these apartments, in order to have a roof over their heads, rent out apartments at market prices of 300-400 euros, or are forced to take out loans from banks, the owners claim.

The European Court of Human Rights has also expressed its opinion on such a situation, which is unacceptable in modern democracies, ruling four times in favor of apartment owners based on the fundamental human right to property. The same court rejected the request of tenants (so-called protected tenants) for the purchase of these apartments back in 2000.

Considering the claims of protected tenants, the association Ownership and Possession emphasizes that more than half of the protected tenants own other properties, and most of the properties they reside in are three-room apartments in the city centers.

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Most property owners are original owners (or their heirs), among the protected tenants (about 3,000 of them) there are at most 19 veterans, and the right of tenancy does not exist in Croatian laws.

They recall that after the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights, the EU Council of Ministers requested Croatia to amend legal regulations in accordance with the rulings by the end of 2017.

– It is sad that today, in a democratic state, an EU member, we have to remind someone of the basic tenets of free societies – the inviolability of private property. This insistence on living in someone else’s property against the owner’s will is practically calling for informal expropriation of property, in the name of someone’s right to a roof over their head, states Igor Leskovar from the association Ownership and Possession.

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– We do not dispute anyone’s right to a roof over their head, but that right cannot be realized at someone else’s expense, says Leskovar. We are additionally pained by information that some of the protected tenants have transferred their properties to other individuals, precisely so they could continue using ours, he added.

Furthermore, in accordance with all rulings of the European Court of Human Rights (as well as recent final rulings of Croatian courts), owners have the right to monetary compensation for the entire duration of the stay of protected tenants in their apartments, which will represent a very serious burden on the state budget. It is estimated that this amounts to as much as 200 million kuna, the association Ownership and Possession states.

About a hundred members of the Croatian Association of Tenants gathered on Thursday in front of the Croatian Parliament in a protest aimed at influencing parliamentary representatives to reject the proposed amendment to the law, which is in its first reading.