A Belgian couple who offered to provide their home to refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine say they were left with €36,000 ($39k) in damages.
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A Belgian couple who offered to provide their home to refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine says they were left with €36,000 ($39k) in damages caused by the Ukrainian family they took in.
Sven De Strijcker and Evy De Koninck offered their former home in the city of Ninove to house Ukrainian refugees to the local public social service centre (CPAS) after the pair had moved to another house in the municipality of Haaltert.
“One day we received a call from the CPAS in Ninove asking if we could pick up a Ukrainian woman with two children (her husband had been killed in the war),” the couple said, newspaper
7sur7 reports.
“Then we got another call asking if we had a problem with the fact that the woman was pregnant. When we arrived, a pregnant woman with three children and her husband were waiting for us,” they added.
“We quickly noticed that this was no ordinary Ukrainian family. Two weeks later, the CPAS told us that they were Roma gipsies. For example, the members of this family did not know how to use a washing machine, a dryer, or an oven… All these devices were unknown to them. The mother washed the clothes in our bathtub,” they said.
French Hotel Commandeered to House Asylum Seekers Now Unusable Due to Damage
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August 8, 2020
According to the pair, just weeks after the family arrived, “Mould appeared all over the windows, the walls were covered with inscriptions, wood was torn from the bed frame, doors and cabinets were damaged. But that’s not all: all the chairs in the kitchen were broken, the moulding was torn off the stairs, there were holes in the floor, our children’s toys were broken, and even their piggy bank was opened.”
The couple also claims the Ukrainian refugees hosted another family in the home. “Another woman, her husband and three children were staying with us. They were subletting. At one point, more than 11 people were in the house,” they said.
“They were also constantly asking us for money. Once it was supposedly for their youngest daughter’s birthday present, but it turned out to be for a car, even though we knew the man didn’t have a driver’s license. When they broke our son’s birth gift, that was the last straw,” they said.
The refugees eventually moved out in December but the couple were left with 36,000 euros of damages and the CPAS refused to pay the couple, telling them to sue the refugees in court for the damages.
The story, while remarkable, is by no means unique in Europe in recent years. In 2020, a French hotel in Forbach that was used to house asylum seekers became so damaged by them that it could no longer be used as a hotel.
André Heintz, head of the Heintz Real Estate and Hotels Group that owned the hotel, claimed the damages were so extensive the costs were estimated at 1.7 million euros.
HILARIOUS!!!
