On a steep, gardenia-scented street in the north-eastern Athens
suburb of Gerakas, in one corner of a patch of bare ground, stands a
small caravan.
Plastic mesh fencing –- orange, of the kind builders use –- encloses a
neat garden in which peppers, courgettes, lettuces and beans grow in
well-tended raised beds. Flowers, too.
The caravan is old, but spotless. It is home to Georgios
Karvouniaris, 61, and his sister Barbara, 64, two Greeks for whom all
the Brussels wrangling over VAT rates, corporation tax and pension
reforms has meant nothing -- because they have nothing, no income of any
kind.
Next Sunday’s referendum -- which, if the country stays solvent that long, will either send Greece
back to the negotiating table with its creditors or precipitate its
exit from the eurozone -- is unlikely to affect them much either.
“I do not see how any of it will change our lives. I have no hope,
anyway,” said Georgios, sitting in a scavenged plastic garden chair
beneath a parasol liberated from a skip.
After seven years of a crisis that has left 26% of Greece’s workforce
unemployed, 30% of its people below the poverty line, 17% unable to
meet their daily food needs and 3.1 million without health insurance, it
is hard to see how anything decided in Brussels or in Athens in the
coming week will do much to change the lives of a large number of Greeks
any time soon.
“Those that were already on the margins have been pushed right to the
very, very edge, and those who were in the middle have been pushed to
the margins,” said Ioanna Pertsinidou of Praksis, a charity that runs
day centres for vulnerable people and offers legal and employment
advice.
“So
many people – ordinary, low-to-middle income people with jobs and homes
and their lives on track -- have seen their lives go drown the drain so
fast,” Pertsinidou said. “People who never dreamed that one day they
would not be able to pay their electricity bill, or feed their children
properly.”
As it has scrabbled for every last cent to satisfy its creditors and
ward off bankruptcy, Greece’s government has taken cash wherever it
could -- local authorities, healthcare, pensions, social services have
all been tapped. In a country of 11 million people, public spending is
now €65bn (£45.6bn) less than it was in 2010. “There is no safety net
left,” said Pertsinidou.
No one need tell that to the Karvouniaris family. Georgios is a stern
man, still strong, smartly shaven and dressed in a clean green polo
short and jeans. His sister, remarkably jovial, wears black for their
younger brother Vangelis, who died of nobody will say exactly what two
years ago next month, aged 52. He spent a brief week in hospital before
his death, for which his siblings recently received a €2,000 bill --
which they managed to get written off.
Until March 2013, the three lived in an apartment a mile or so away
that they had shared since 1980. None of them had ever married. It
worked well. Georgios, a welder and mechanic before becoming a bank
security guard, and Vangelis, a salesman, shoe repairer and, latterly,
gardener, were the breadwinners. Barbara cooked, cleaned and looked
after her brothers.
Quite early in Greece’s crisis, Vangelis lost his job. Then in
February 2011, Georgios lost his at the Agrotiki bank, where he had
worked for 12 years. After leaving school at 12 and working ever since,
Georgios got €465 unemployment benefit for eight months, then €200 for a
year, then nothing.
The rent on the apartment was €250. “We spent all we had,” he said.
“Our savings. We sold Barbara’s jewellery, for half its worth. We tried
to sell this patch of land but no one would buy it. For the first time
in 30 years, we didn’t pay our rent. By the end we couldn’t even afford
food.”
If the Karvouniarises are not now sleeping rough, it is because a
neighbour saw them sitting in tears outside their apartment building,
formally threatened with eviction and all packed up but with nowhere to
go. They had not eaten for three days.
It took time, but Despina Moragianis -- a relative of that neighbour --
and her friends, Ann Papastavrou and Niki Festas, women in their 60s,
rallied their women’s group in Halandri.
Twenty-odd people, none wealthy, pitched in to buy the 15-year-old
caravan, which was towed to the Kourvaniaris family’s small plot, once
intended as Barbara’s dowry.
For 13 months there was no water, but a campaign by the women
persuaded the Gerakas town hall to fit a standpipe in May last year.
Later, the group raised €1,000 to have it plumbed into the caravan and a
septic tank dug, so the toilet works. The next target is a solar panel
for electricity.
Georgios Karvouniaris and his sister Barbara outside their caravan: photo by Jon Henley for The Guardian, 28 June 2015
Every month the group holds a raffle, the proceeds of which buy fresh
fruit and vegetables -- apples, oranges, beans, potatoes -- which
Moragianis and her friends bring up to the caravan once a week. Fresh
meat is once a week. Non-perishables -- spaghetti, rice, flour, condensed
milk, tomato sauce -- come from the food bank.
And so the Karvouniaris siblings survive. Georgios digs, recycles
what he can find on the streets, takes long walks and dreams of fresh
milk. No electricity means no fridge. Barbara cooks – there is a gas
stove – cleans, washes clothes and tends her garden.
The couple have no money -- a friendly town hall official paid their
latest €18 water bill out of his own pocket -- and no hope of any until
Georgios qualifies for his pension at 67. “I’d hoped it might be 65, in
four years’ time, but they’ve just recently decided to raise the age
limit,” he said.
He is not sure how much he will get even then. Pensions have been a
major stumbling block in Greece’s aid-for-reforms talks with its
creditors, who want further savings from a system whose benefits have
already been cut by 45%, leaving nearly half of Greece’s pensioners
below the monthly poverty threshold of €665.
It is not just pensioners in penury. Under a limited relief programme
promised by the Syriza party during its election victory in January,
more than 300,000 of the poorest Greek households applied last month for
food aid, a small rent allowance and to have their electricity
reconnected for free.
So far the government has found the money to pay a small housing
benefit to precisely 1,073 people, the social solidarity minister,
Theano Fotiou, admitted. The €70 a month grocery voucher Georgios and
Barbara were promised under the scheme -- “We have no house and no power,
so there was nothing else we qualified for,” said Georgios -- has yet to
materialise.
Barbara’s face briefly clouds. How does she feel about the way they
have been treated? “Disgusted,” she said, quietly. “Just … disgusted.”
She smiles again. “But we’ve been lucky. There are people who have
nowhere to sleep at all.”
According to a University of Crete study earlier this year, there are
now 17,700 people without proper and secure housing in Athens alone.
Some sleep rough or in cars, others camp with friends or relatives, or
live in squats and hostels.
A majority are in their own homes, threatened with imminent eviction
because they are among the estimated 320,000 Greek families who have
fallen behind with a mortgage or other payment to their bank.
Two are in a small donated caravan, living on food donated by a group
of Greek women. Georgios is grateful, but he also gets angry sometimes.
“I have worked all my life. I’ve paid my taxes all my life,” he said.
“I’m 61 years old and if it wasn’t for the generosity of people who
three years ago we had never met, we would be sleeping on a bench. You
do what you can. But it doesn’t seem right.”
#GreeceCrisis Graffiti and people in the streets in Athens on June 28, 2015. #AFP PHOTO by @ArisMessinis: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 28 June 2015
