Anti-social housing
The segregation model dominates social housing schemes.
At the entrance to the Hajvali meadows, seven kilometers from Prishtina, two five-story buildings with yellow facades stand prominently along the main road, right next to the detention center.
“Life here is unbearable,” says a man in his sixties, leaning over his balcony in one of the buildings. The balcony is his favorite spot, as physical disabilities and age-related health problems limit his mobility.
Until 2016, he lived in his house in Prishtina with his wife and two children. That year, however, one of his children fell ill, and the cost of medical treatment exceeded what the family could afford. They were forced to sell their home, but despite all their efforts, the child passed away.
In a short time, the family endured two devastating losses: first their house, and then their child. In 2017, the Municipality of Prishtina provided him, his wife and their daughter with an apartment. Since then, they have lived in the yellow buildings, which are commonly referred to as “social housing apartments.”
47-year-old Sylë Haliti lives at the other entrance. Until seven years ago, he rented an apartment in the Dardania neighborhood in Prishtina, paying for it with his salary as a truck driver. However, after suffering two heart attacks, he could no longer work. In 2017, he joined the social assistance program, which provides financial support to families without income, and applied for housing. Nearly all families unable to afford rent and in need of housing are part of the social assistance scheme.
For seven years, he has shared the apartment in Hajvali with his wife and three of his five children, while his two eldest daughters have started their own families and live elsewhere. The remaining three children are not yet of working age.
Although he secured temporary shelter, his worries and problems persist. “Sometimes I think about running away at night,” Syla said several times during the conversation.
The challenges of living there go beyond the walls of the social housing complex, which is distinctly separate from other residential buildings in Hajvali. This physical isolation and grouping in buildings separate from others marks residents as facing difficult economic circumstances, fostering an atmosphere of exclusion and stigma.
Before the Hajvali buildings became functional, residents of the Hajvali neighborhood, who owned houses or apartments, opposed the construction of social housing buildings in the area in 2017 and even warned of protests. Syla explained that this stigmatization had repercussions outside of the social housing complex. Just as their apartments are segregated, his daughter has also faced segregation at school.
“They beat my daughter two or three times at school, calling her ‘poor’ and saying, ‘You’re part of the social scheme.’ I went to the principal, but they took no action,” Syla said.
For seven years, the two social housing buildings, each with 50 apartments, have provided shelter for families facing difficult economic conditions. The building in the upper section, near the entrance to the detention center, is designated for families from war-related categories, such as those of martyrs or veterans. The other building, located a few meters below, houses a diverse mix of residents, including single parents and people with disabilities.
In addition to that in Hajvalia, Prishtina has two similar social housing buildings located at Fusha e Pajtimit, at the end of the Kolovica neighborhood, near the road leading to the villages of Gollak.
The capital is not alone in implementing this social housing model. The clustering of families in need of housing in isolated blocks, primarily in the suburbs, is the dominant model in Kosovo.
The segregation model in social housing
Social housing is the responsibility of municipalities and is not a centralized national program. Since 2003, and up until 2024, most municipalities in Kosovo have built or allocated separate buildings for social housing. According to data from the Ministry of Environment, Spatial Planning and Infrastructure (MESPI), a total of 20 municipalities have social housing programs, all following this model — buildings separated from others, where only citizens who rely on the social housing scheme reside.
These buildings house Kosovo citizens who lost their homes during the 1998-1999 war, those who cannot afford to buy or rent a home, individuals with disabilities, single parents, people with chronic illnesses and victims of domestic sexual violence. Overall, social housing aims to support economically and socially vulnerable citizens.
Since 2010, the Law on Financing Special Housing Programs has regulated social housing, establishing a general framework while specifying details through a series of administrative instructions. According to this legal framework, social housing should be temporary, lasting until the beneficiary achieves an economic situation that allows them to become independent from the scheme. Additionally, residents must pay a small rent according to the contract they sign with the respective municipalities, which goes toward building maintenance. Municipalities determine the rent using a formula that considers the value of the construction and the family’s income level. Therefore, social housing functions as non-profit rental housing for municipalities, as the rent revenue is reinvested into maintenance.
The law outlines two models of social housing. The dominant model in Kosovo places social housing beneficiaries in buildings exclusively designated for these citizens. The second model is subsidized rent for apartments in regular residential buildings, known as the “housing bonus.”
According to the MESPI, 1,178 families live in 51 social housing complexes across Kosovo, which were built between 2003 and 2019.
Each municipality implements its own social housing program. Some municipalities build separate buildings, while others acquire housing from commercial developers by offering public land for construction, or as compensation for a building permit.
According to Law No. 03/L-164 on Financing Special Housing Programs in Kosovo, the categories of families eligible for these programs include:
- Families of war martyrs and invalids
- Families of civilian victims of war
- Families of missing persons
- Internally displaced persons (IDPs)
- Returnees
- Families in need
- Persons with disabilities
- Elderly persons without family care
- Women heads of households
- Other vulnerable groups
K2.0 has reached out to over 30 municipalities individually, 15 of which provided data on their social housing programs. Since each municipality implements a social housing program based on its specific needs — building new housing and creating new spaces between existing ones — there is a lack of coordination between local and central levels. According to municipal data, the number of buildings dedicated to social housing is higher than what the MESPI data shows.
For example, Malisheva has eight smaller buildings, each with four apartments, housing 32 families. As in most other municipalities, the municipality owns both the buildings and the land on which they are constructed. In addition to those listed in the MESPI table, the Municipality of Lipjan has stakes in three other private buildings, which contain a total of 59 apartments for social housing. In this arrangement, the municipality leased its land for construction to private investors, who then compensated the municipality with apartments.
The Municipality of Gjakova will continue using the model of concentrating citizens in need of housing in a collective building. Gjakova currently has two social housing buildings with 48 apartments, and its new social housing building will include 24 apartments.
The “housing bonus” model, based on responses from 15 municipalities, appears to be less common. However, the Municipality of Suhareka is an exception, as it does not have any collective social housing buildings and relies entirely on this model. According to the municipality, 15 housing requests were made in 2023, and 10 families benefited from them.
Based on the municipalities’ responses, they receive more housing requests each year than they can accommodate. For this reason, some municipalities also have individual houses built in collaboration with various charitable associations.
Although social housing is meant to be temporary, municipalities’ inability to meet all citizens’ housing requests stems from their difficulty in fully implementing the program. A 2019 study by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES), a German political foundation promoting social democratic values, found that municipalities do not sign contracts with social housing tenants. This creates challenges for municipalities in collecting rent and evicting families who no longer meet the criteria for receiving social housing. Additionally, municipalities often lack the specialized or adequate staff needed to implement the law on social housing effectively.
This results in most municipalities adapting old buildings to create space for new residents when housing demand rises and there is no available space or new construction. Ground floors and warehouses are converted into rooms and sometimes, balconies are enclosed to expand living areas. The improvisation and neglect of buildings used for social housing often lead to spaces that do not meet proper living conditions.
Adapted living spaces
In the village of Çikatovë e Re in Drenas, the facade of two collective social housing buildings, which contain a total of 50 apartments, is damaged, as are the interior walls and electricity meter boxes. These buildings were constructed in 2008.
Near a makeshift fence next to the entrance stands 61-year-old Musa Kastrati, who, along with his wife Hamide, has lived in an adapted ground-floor space for 13 years. When they first moved in, the living room door opened directly onto the street. This made winters difficult, as the cold seeped into the room. Cars often parked in front of the door, blocking their exit and balls from children playing in front of the building hit the door and window several times a day.
This forced him to build an improvised barrier, which formed a space between the living room door and the building’s larger courtyard, where cars were usually parked.
Both Musa and Hamide have mobility problems with their hands, and their combined monthly income from disability pensions totals 240 euros. The space where they live includes a living room with a kitchen and a bathroom, covering a total of 24 square meters.
“It’s narrow, but since it’s just my wife and me, it’s enough; it’s sufficient for me,” Musa said. “This space serves as a living area, storage room, and storeroom. They adapted it, considering the number of families, divided it into three, modified it, and we moved in.”
Hamide isn’t as bothered by the small space in which they live, as she is by the other harsh conditions. Traces of moisture are visible on the ceiling and walls.
“Look at the signs of mold; I get stuck cleaning it all day. This place was not fit to live in; it is damp. The sewage from above has burst several times. If we hadn’t done this work outside the house, we wouldn’t have been able to live here, especially in the winter, because the door opened directly outside. But this is blocking the cold a little now,” she said.
Although Musa’s improvised fence — as he calls it — is technically not allowed, he keeps it because the small yard it creates is the only space where he finds peace.
The location of the buildings is inconvenient for movement, which is further complicated by his age and health problems that already limit his mobility. Drenas has no public transportation, only private buses or taxis. He often struggles to get around outside the village because he cannot afford this expense.
“To get to the city, I have to call a taxi. Some people have cars, some don’t. I don’t have one myself,” he said. “I walk; I go out and walk for an hour, all around and come home.” The nearest hospital is seven kilometers away. “I usually ask someone to take me, since I’m completely dependent on others. Sometimes I have to call my brother’s sons from Poklek to come pick me up and take me to the doctor.”
When discussing his living conditions, Musa believes that the best solution for improving them would be to have the opportunity to live in his village. The war in Kosovo left him homeless; his house burned down, forcing him to enter the social housing scheme in Çikatovë instead of his village, Verbovc. He wishes he could live in Verbovc, but the municipality offers social housing only through these two buildings.
Gathering all citizens in need of housing in the same residential buildings is more isolating than meeting their needs.
Linda Gusia, a professor and head of the sociology department at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Prishtina, believes that a national strategy that treats housing as a social problem “beyond bricks and a roof” is lacking.
According to Gusia, the social housing buildings in Hajvali and Çikatovë, as well as similar models throughout the country, serve as examples of “creating ghettos with taxpayers’ money” due to the flawed institutional approach.
“You are creating ghettos and making a bigger problem than what you already had. You are putting all these people with different problems together in a small space, where you have not created any other mechanisms to help them; you have only isolated them,” Gusia said.
While new segregated buildings are being constructed, hundreds of thousands of apartments and houses remain empty in Kosovo.
Preliminary data from the 2024 population and household census by the Kosovo Agency of Statistics (KAS) shows that out of 559,936 apartments or houses nationwide, 33.2% are uninhabited.
The FES report cites the wasted opportunity for creating a stock of housing units in not taking advantage of the construction boom in Prishtina and other cities. FES recommended that these municipalities be more creative and develop models for creating municipally-owned housing stocks.
One model FES presents is replacing construction taxes with housing units. FES says this approach would eliminate the need for building social housing, which is costly, difficult to manage and creates social isolation.
Meanwhile, Gusia proposes another model. While noting the large number of empty apartments, Gusia sees part of the solution in what he calls “a kind of damage repair,” through the confiscation of some apartments, in buildings that have exceeded construction permits or as compensation for debts to the municipality.
“Any inspector can come out and find a million ways in which the buildings have been distorted, deformed, misused and gone beyond the permits they had. As punishment, they can take away three or four apartments and turn those apartments into collective housing,” she said.
Beyond isolation, the health of non-majority communities is also at risk
The polluted smoke from the Kosova B power plant signals proximity to the collective buildings housing citizens from the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian communities. The facades are damaged, doors and windows are broken and the buildings are improvised, with closed balconies expanding living space and warehouses adapted for housing.
Smajl Hasani has lived in one of the 58 housing units in the two collective buildings, since their construction in 2005. The 57-year-old, who is unemployed, angrily expresses his dissatisfaction with the space and the conditions in which his ten-member family lives.
“There are 10-15 people here who share a room and a kitchen,” Smajl said, walking around. This situation also conflicts with Administrative Instruction (24/2010) on minimum living standards for social housing, which stipulates that the minimum living area for a single person should be 13 square meters.
While discussing this and the lack of water and sanitation, Smajl added briefly, “There is no life here.”
Because his family has grown, he and his wife, Nevrija Brizaku, who is 56 years old, have temporarily moved into one of the warehouses next to the building, leaving some of their children in the apartment. As they head toward the recently burned warehouse — fires are common, they say — Nevrija cannot hide her anger and concerns about safety, especially at night.
“There’s a lot of noise and a lot of fires. I swear we’re scared to sleep, both upstairs [in the apartment] and downstairs [in the warehouse], because I sleep right there in the warehouse, as the neighbors have allowed,” she said. “This is not living. It would be better to go and live in a tent or build a hut for myself, as my father and grandfather did.”
Their neighbor, Avni Berisha, has lived with his family of 14 members and his son’s family in a two-room apartment since 2006. He is also unhappy with their current shelter. In addition to the lack of adequate space and poor living conditions, Plemetin residents face the danger posed by the nearby coal-fired Kosova B power plant, which is one of the biggest air pollutants in the country and endangers their health daily.
“The dust from the Kosova B power plant is choking us here; all the dust is coming to us,” Berisha said, also mentioning the distance from public services. “God willing, we will move somewhere closer to the city, because of the doctors, the school and the kindergartens,” he added, surrounded by some of the children.
Air pollution has been described as an “invisible killer” in Kosovo, especially for residents living near Obiliq. On October 24, 2024, the Municipality of Obiliq raised the alarm about high levels of pollution, blaming the Kosovo Energy Corporation. The filters of the Kosova B power plant had been out of operation for nearly a month, causing excess pollution.
According to the municipality, reports from 2023 show that residents reported 17,912 cases of respiratory diseases and 7,355 cases of circulatory diseases. Additionally, the municipality registers an average of 50 new cancer cases each year.
For the first time since their construction, 22 social housing buildings in 10 municipalities, including Plemetin, Çikatovë and Hajvali, are set to undergo renovations through the Kosovo Energy Efficiency Fund. The project, which includes investments in facades, doors and windows, will receive funding from a 5.5 million euro grant from the European Union, with municipalities contributing 10% in co-financing.
According to Gusia, the social housing buildings in Plemetin involve more than just ghettoization. She views them as both an institutional and social problem and as the worst example of racism, discrimination and environmental injustice.
“We have built a neighborhood in the dirtiest place, an area that is an ecological hazard,” said Gusia. “It is murder to place those residents there.”
For Gusia, the segregation of economically disadvantaged residents reflects how the state and society perceive this problem. She believes the issue of housing should not be a matter of mercy.
“It is a matter of social justice, collective thinking and rethinking the use of spaces. It is about access and creating opportunities for citizens’ social mobility,” she said.
In this context, Gusia cited the Solidarity Apartments in Prishtina as a good example of social mobility. These apartments were built next to the Dardania school around the 1970s.
The Solidarity Housing buildings, with several entrances and dozens of residential units, stand in the row of buildings between Kurrizi in the Dardania neighborhood and the school bearing the neighborhood’s name. According to Gusia, these buildings aimed to integrate the categories that benefited from social housing, rather than isolate and segregate them. The buildings are located near educational institutions and the family medicine center. Additionally, not all the residents in these buildings were in difficult economic situations; officials and other public employees also received housing according to the rules of the time, creating a mixed community.
“Solidarity was the key here. They didn’t build that building just for people in need or the poor; they integrated them and created a mix, which is why it worked well,” Gusia said. “Housing is not just about having shelter and drinking water. It’s about having a school nearby, a kindergarten nearby and mobility.”
This integrative model of social housing is now pervasive in Europe. The Municipality of Prishtina pledges to implement policies that could change the concept of social housing in the country.
Little hope for abandoning the segregated model
It is difficult to find a common definition of social housing in Europe. However, there are models that aim for integration and mobility, in addition to low housing costs. Social Housing in Europe, a book edited by Christine Whitehead and Kathleen Scanlon, presents extensive research on social housing programs in nine European countries. In it, the definition of social housing mainly relates to ownership, the construction company, whether the rents are below market and subsidized and most importantly, the purpose for which the housing is provided.
In 2007, out of the nine countries Whitehead and Scanlon studied, the Netherlands had the highest rate of “social rent” — the market rent paid by citizens in social housing schemes. In the Netherlands, 2.4 million flats or houses, accounting for 35% of all housing units, were provided for social housing. Austria ranked second, with 25% or 800,000 housing units, followed by Denmark at 21%. France had the highest number of housing units overall, with 4.23 million units, though this was not the highest percentage of the population, representing 17%.
The social housing model in the EU differs from that in Kosovo, as it does not target only families facing economic difficulties. In the Netherlands, for example, non-profit housing associations — woningcorporaties, in Dutch — run the social housing system. These associations own about two-thirds of the rental units in the country and serve approximately 30% of families. They keep the buildings off the market, protecting them from inflation and maintaining affordable rental prices. Owners of residential buildings managed by these associations cannot increase rents except in accordance with regulations set by the Dutch government. To qualify for social housing, individuals must meet a maximum income limit of approximately 47,699 euros per year, or about 57,000 euros for couples. This makes social housing affordable for young people and young couples who may not have high initial incomes.
In France, law requires cities with over 3,500 inhabitants (and 1,500 in the Paris region) to reserve at least 25% of their housing stock for social housing. This effort aims to combat segregation and ensure that affordable housing is available in all communities. In addition to citizens with low economic incomes, France also offers social housing to workers in essential sectors, such as teachers, police officers and healthcare workers, especially in urban areas where housing costs are high.
In their book, Whitehead and Scanlon estimate that EU members prefer to provide social housing in mixed areas rather than in segregated ones. The research highlights the importance of the location of these areas, citing segregation and other factors related to social integration as significant concerns.
A 2022 report by the United Nations defines spatial segregation as the physical and social separation of groups within a community, often based on race, ethnicity, income, or other identity markers. This segregation results in segregated neighborhoods, unequal access to services and exclusion from shared spaces. The report states that spatial segregation harms marginalized communities by reinforcing inequalities, perpetuating poverty, limiting access to education and health, deepening social divisions, increasing stigma and isolating communities.
Prishtina implements a model of mixed areas, although on a very small scale. In neighborhoods like Bregu i Diellit, Ulpiana and Dardania, the municipality owns several housing units in collective housing buildings, some of which are among the most sought-after and have the highest purchase prices. These units primarily house victims of domestic violence, to prevent the discovery of their location and avoid stigmatization.
After acknowledging the shortcomings of the current models of collective social housing in Hajvali and Fusha e Pajtimit, Deputy Mayor of Prishtina Alban Zogaj said that the current municipal administration opposes the model of concentrating residents in need of housing in separate buildings and is discussing the “dissolution” of this form of social housing.
“What this means is moving families and placing them in other apartments where we have available space, then making changes to break up this idea of grouping these families in one place. We are really creating a ghetto, a ghettoization, a group that then has difficulty integrating into society,” said Zogaj.
In this context, he mentioned the initiative for new housing models, including conditioning building permits on private investors setting aside 3.5% of the total surface area in new buildings. The municipality will first implement this policy in the Calabria neighborhood. In May 2024, the regulatory plan for the Calabria neighborhood was approved. Although the municipality views this plan as an effort to dismantle the model of concentrating residents in separate social housing buildings, the spaces allocated by private investors will not be used exclusively for social housing. According to the plan, these spaces will also serve other public purposes, such as kindergartens.
Meanwhile, the municipality expects to have a stock of housing and other spaces available for the social housing program within one or two years.
Zogaj expects this policy to successfully avoid segregation, drawing on past experiences with mixed-use housing units, such as the Standard apartments in Bregu i Diellit. In 2007, the Municipality of Prishtina received 49 apartments through a public-private partnership agreement with The Standard, a global consortium. But although Zogaj presented the practice in Bregu i Diellit as a successful model of coexistence between residents of the social program and other residents, this model did not apply the basic principles of housing needs.
The 49 apartments were allocated to 49 families, but 29 of the 49 families were of Municipality of Prishtina civil servants and former municipal councilors or assembly members. Only three families in difficult economic situations received apartments. The remaining units went to police officers, members of the former Kosovo Protection Corps and families displaced by the war, including families of martyrs and veterans.
While local governments are responsible for social housing, FES research identifies the lack of a state strategy for social housing as a key problem. A recently adopted draft law aims to establish a national housing strategy.
The government has not amended the law on social housing since 2010, although administrative instructions have made some adjustments. Successive governments have pledged to reform social housing, and Vetëvendosje (VV) also committed to this reform when it took office in 2021.
In early December 2024, the Kosovo Assembly approved the Draft Law on Social and Affordable Housing. This draft law outlines the government’s plan to adopt a national strategy over eight years and to establish the Housing Agency, which will centralize the social and affordable housing program at the national level.
In addition to the social housing program, the law lays the groundwork for affordable housing, including subsidizing apartment purchases for young couples and single parents.
According to the law, social housing benefits will extend to citizens whose income is insufficient to secure adequate housing at market prices. The rent for social housing will not exceed 30% of a family’s income.
The law includes at least 17 categories or target groups for social and affordable housing. The only new category added in this draft law is young people, with no further specifications.
The law also outlines the renovation of existing social housing buildings and the addition of housing units dedicated to social housing. It includes provisions for purchasing housing units on favorable terms to be used for social housing, as well as public-private partnerships.
This could pave the way for broader implementation of the model that distributes housing units in private collective buildings rather than concentrating them in separate buildings.
However, the new law continues to support the model of separate buildings by planning the construction of such buildings in municipalities. Although it includes provisions for renovating existing separate buildings, it does not seem to establish any mechanism for dismantling the model of separating citizens in need of shelter.
Meanwhile, on November 29, 2024, a week before the law was approved by the Kosovo Assembly, the prime minister announced the launch of a tender for the “construction of affordable housing facilities” in the Municipalities of Peja, Istog, Gjilan and Podujeva. He stated that the project would provide “dignified housing, not just shelter.” The implementation is estimated to cost around 38 million euros, with construction expected to take up to 36 months, or three years.
According to the tender notice, the Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning conducted two feasibility studies for the project — one for social housing and another for affordable housing. Although the law includes both types of housing under a single framework, the separate feasibility studies may indicate that these categories will remain distinct.
The addition of new administrative instructions to the law will clarify whether the new buildings will feature a mixed resident structure, integrating citizens who benefit from the social housing scheme, or whether they will follow the feasibility studies’ approach and continue the practice of segregation.
Lead editor: Gentiana Paçarizi.
Feature Image: Fatlum Jashari / K2.0.
This article was published with the financial support of the European Union as part of the project “Diversifying voices in journalism.” Its contents are the sole responsibility of Kosovo 2.0 and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.
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