Permanent Housing for Vulnerable Families
Ankica is his new home in Belgrade, Serbia.
Photo: CWS
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Many refugee, displaced, and vulnerable families--including single mothers, Roma ethnic minorities, and other low-income families--in Serbia are in need of permanent housing. Church World Service is working with partner MicroFinS to assist families in and around the city of Belgrade to construct or rehabilitate housing by providing low-interest micro-credit loans. In most cases, housing loan recipients are renting apartments or living in collective centers. The goal of the project is to provide a space with at least one fully functional bedroom and bathroom.
It is the custom in the region for neighbors to help one another with this type of work, so most of CWS support is used for materials. The housing project is expected to last four years. To date, 18 loans have been disbursed. Loan repayments will help to fund future loans to families.
Following are some of the lives that have been changed through this project:
Joka Ankica left Sisak, Croatia, with her husband, two sons, and the luggage they could place in their car and small trailer. Ankica’s husband is a carpenter by trade, and owned a small wood lathe. When they arrived in Belgrade they found shelter in a collective center. Ankica and her two sons found jobs. Her husband began work as a carpenter and, thanks to a MicroFinS loan, he expanded his business.
They were able to move into an apartment in Ovèa, a suburb of Belgrade, but it was small for a four-member family and living conditions were very poor. For that reason, they decided to build their own house, but were only able to finish basic work on the structure--including installing a temporary roof—before funds ran out. A CWS/MicroFinS housing loan helped them to install a bathroom, one additional room, and kitchen. Today, they live in their own house and are no longer tenants.
Mile Lalovic was seriously injured and became disabled in the Balkans conflict. He joined his family already settled in northern Vojvodina region, and they moved into a humid, time-worn house in the town of Zmajevo to start a new life. A large courtyard was a suitable space to start his new business raising pigs.
When their daughter was born, he and his wife realized they needed a larger, cleaner space in which to live and made plans to build a new house on the property. But because they had invested all the family’s savings in buying the old house, they didn’t have enough money to start construction on the new house. Lalovic sold his cattle and fowl, and dismantled the pigsties and coops from which he obtained old bricks, rafters, and tiles for the initial phase of building a new house.
He turned to CWS and MicroFinS again, applying for a housing loan. The family now has a new house, though not totally complete, that is clean and large enough for their growing family. With his inexhaustible energy Mile is now investing in a greenhouse for growing vegetables. Every dinar Lalovic earns is invested in making living conditions for his family even better.
Bukoroviæ Novica is a refugee from Croatia. After he arrived in Serbia, he bought a piece of land in Batajnica and started to build a house. Novica paid for all the initial work himself, but limited funds prevented him from finishing. The house had no façade, an improvised leaky roof, and a non-working toilet, making for very poor living conditions.
His children were constantly sick, and his mother spent more time in the hospital than at home. Thanks to a recommendation by one of CWS/MicroFinS’s former clients, he was able to secure a housing loan. The funds and his own skill helped him to rehabilitate the house and provide significantly better living conditions for his family. He built a sloping roof, roughcast walls, a new façade and front door, and a fully functioning bathroom.