The Georgian state all too often fails to address underlying causes of homelessness. People like these residents of a Tbilisi squat will continue to suffer from social exclusion and marginality. (c) Sopo Aptsiauri. All rights reserved.“I have lived in an abandoned basement, which used to be a mortuary. How can I be scared of prison if I am threatened with imprisonment?” Nata, a widow and a single mother, has been squatting in Tbilisi’s old Cardiological Institute for four years. “They want to believe in your immorality,” she tells me, “but can’t admit your hardship and accept the truth.”
Tbilisi’s Cardiological Institute, a single Soviet building without basic communications, sewage system, thermal insulation or elevator, is one among hundreds of abandoned city buildings which have been used as dwellings in recent years. While the Georgian state has limited its assistance to the people residing in these buildings to providing small amounts of firewood during winter, it has sought to restrict any attempts by Tbilisi’s squatters to improve their living conditions. Crucially, it has penalised them by abolishing subsistence allowances for poor households. The authorities believe the city’s homeless wish to legalise possession of occupied spaces, though squatters, on the whole, do not intend to do so.
What’s lost here is the understanding that homelessness isn’t just about ownership of space
