When it rains, water seeps through the roof of Giannis Katsaris’s home in the Nomismatokopio Roma settlement, under Chalandri municipality. The streets outside transform into rivers, trapping families in mud and sewage. You can’t step out without the water reaching your ankles. These are not rare occurrences – like many Roma communities across Greece, the settlement lacks proper sewage, electricity, and infrastructure.
Giannis, 24, dropped out of school after middle school, not by choice but out of necessity. **“I used to go there and get bullied. Even the principal knew but didn’t help. They insulted me, beat me in the bathrooms, and from all that psychological abuse, I ended up developing an autoimmune disease, Guillain-Barré, from stress. They’d say things like, ‘Get out of her…
When it rains, water seeps through the roof of Giannis Katsaris’s home in the Nomismatokopio Roma settlement, under Chalandri municipality. The streets outside transform into rivers, trapping families in mud and sewage. You can’t step out without the water reaching your ankles. These are not rare occurrences – like many Roma communities across Greece, the settlement lacks proper sewage, electricity, and infrastructure.
Giannis, 24, dropped out of school after middle school, not by choice but out of necessity. “I used to go there and get bullied. Even the principal knew but didn’t help. They insulted me, beat me in the bathrooms, and from all that psychological abuse, I ended up developing an autoimmune disease, Guillain-Barré, from stress. They’d say things like, ‘Get out of here, you filthy gypsy, you don’t belong here.’”
Years later, he returned to education, enrolling in a second-chance school after turning 18. He now hopes to train as an auto mechanic through a state vocational program.
“I want to continue so that I can have a decent job, good living conditions, and be able to live in a house, pay my rent and my water bills,”** **he said, “I don’t want people on the street pointing at me and saying, ‘That gypsy who lives there.’ They will still do it. Even if I find a job and finish university, even if I study, there will still be targeting. But at least I want to hold my head high.”
Giannis Katsaris, 24, in the Roma settlement of Chalandri, Athens. Once forced to leave school after years of bullying, he has returned to education with hopes of becoming an auto mechanic. Around him, families live without formal electricity or clean water — yet Giannis dreams of stability, dignity, and a life where he can “hold his head high.” Photo contributed by Sophia Potsi.
Around him, the settlement hums with quiet activity — children chasing each other through puddles, mothers hauling water, music echoing between shacks. Life is a daily negotiation with scarcity. In Gerakas, residents draw water from the cemetery; in Chalandri, from contaminated rubber pipes. Electricity is tapped illegally, not out of choice but necessity, as the Greek Public Power Corporation cannot connect unpermitted homes. Thirty-five families live in Gerakas, 22 in makeshift shacks without sewage systems. “The mayors know, but they say it will be fixed,” says Giorgos Nikolaou, a nursing graduate resident of the Geraka settlement. “Nothing happens.”
“The targeting— even if I lived in a house—would still exist as soon as they found out I’m a Romani; it’s just like that here, the settlement has been associated with many illegal things that aren’t true,” Giannis says.
Police presence adds another layer of tension. Nikolaou knows this well. His mother, Paraskevi, keeps watch over their settlement after a police raid on July 14, 2025.
“She can’t sleep,” Giorgos says. “She wakes up at 4 a.m., sits by the window drinking coffee, looking left and right. At night, she sleeps at my cousin’s house up the road, in case there’s another raid.”
The raid that took place on July 14 was an exception for the Gerakas camp, which is a small community compared to other Roma settlements in Athens and one that has not seen extreme violence.
“In Gerakas, the police used to come quietly,” Giorgos recalls. “Usually, they’d make one or two arrests for electricity theft and leave. This time they came in violently. After a routine inspection, the only things they found were electricity theft and an air gun — which the news later reported as a real weapon.”
The Greek government recently announced the creation of a special police force for Roma communities, a move that has raised alarm among civil society groups and rights advocates. Roma in Greece are not officially recognized as a minority; they are and wish to be known as Greek citizens. Yet, this legal ambiguity leaves them without the protections offered to other recognized minority groups.
Nikos Katsaris, Giannis’s father, questions the logic: “Why a [police] team only for Roma? We are scapegoats for the far-right, so the neighborhood can see ‘checks are being done,’ but these checks are just excessive.”
Raids often follow accusations of noise complaints and electricity theft, which is a thing that people of the community openly admit to doing out of necessity, carried out by OPKE — Greece’s heavily armed special police units, often function as collective punishment.
“A settlement means that everyone pays,” says Elena Desiotou, mediator at the branch of the Municipality of Chalandri, member of the Union of Greek Roma Mediators and Associates. “Why should everyone pay? Is it collective responsibility? Responsibility is individual. What do you do as the police, as the state, as the government to hold only the person that has done it responsible and not the whole community?”
Echoing Desiotou’s argument about collective punishment, the fear she describes is not abstract — it is taught to the youngest members of the camp, a daily lesson in caution that becomes trauma.
“If you want to tell all the little kids something to frighten them and make them go into the house motionless and trembling, go and tell them, ‘Get inside, the cops are coming.’ You’ll see them tremble and run. Babies are two or three years old.” says Nikos.
A child runs through puddles in the Roma settlement of Gerakas, northeast Athens. Families here live in makeshift homes without a proper access to clean water or electricity, relying on improvised connections to navigate everyday life. Photo contributed by Sophia Potsi.
Related: Roma in Greece Face a History of Exclusion, Exploitation and Racism [April 2022]
Across Greece, police raids, media stigmatization, and discriminatory rhetoric intertwine. Despite being one of Europe’s oldest ethnic groups, Roma remain among its most marginalized citizens. The EU’s Roma Strategic Framework for Equality, Inclusion and Participation (2020–2030) calls on member states to dismantle segregated settlements and ensure access to housing, education, healthcare, and employment. Greece has pledged to meet these goals, but implementation remains slow.
Across Europe, similar patterns unfold as far-right narratives gain traction across the continent, Roma are often cast as symbols of disorder, used to justify punitive policing and deflect attention from broader social failures.
Moreover, according to the Commissioner for Human Rights Report, many Roma face police raids involving verbal and physical violence, racist insults, and harassment. They are often fined for minor offenses, such as selling goods without a license or driving with a broken light, or illegal tapping of utilities. Yet this vicious cycle fuels crime statistics, as reflected in a recent statement by Michalis Chrisochoidis, Greece’s Minister for Citizen Protection, who claimed that Roma are responsible for 75% of criminal activity.
A view of the Gerakas settlement from above. Photo contributed by Sophia Potsi.
But for those living in the settlements, these numbers tell only part of the story. “They say Romani steal copper. Do you know how much 10 kilos of copper is worth? 60 euros.” Katsaris says “Do you think I’ll steal ten kilos of copper to get rich? I do it to feed my children. The Romani steals, yes, but have you ever seen a Romani steal a lot? He steals to survive — 20, 30, 50 euros to feed his children. If you give him a job, he’s not foolish enough to go to jail for 50 euros. He’ll work a day’s labor to feed his children. When you provide a solution, it’s different. The Roma isn’t to blame for stealing — society is. When you ask for work and are constantly told, ‘We don’t have any,’ that’s the problem.”
Kostas Efthymiou, Deputy Mayor for Social Solidarity at the Municipality of Chalandri, which as a municipality has Roma population and has handled the issue of integration explains:
“Crime statistics are constantly being reproduced. Authorities claim that 50% of criminality is attributed to Roma. Of course, when there is electricity theft or petty theft, there are offenses in the settlements—we all know that. But convictions also depend on having a lawyer, which most people don’t, and that skews the data. When the police enter a settlement and arrest five people for electricity theft, the record shows five offenders. The real question, however, is to what extent serious crime actually exists among Roma.”
The bias runs deep. Beyond camp raids, Roma describe repeated random street checks — often degrading, intimidating, and far from routine. In recent years, three Roma men — Nikos Sampanis (October 2021), Kostas Fragoulis (December 2022), and most recently Christos Michalopoulos (July 2023)— have been killed by police under similar circumstances: young men shot during alleged pursuits over stolen vehicles or minor infractions.
Prejudice against Roma people is also evident in public rhetoric. Police analyst Stavros Balaskas infamously stated, “Build more prisons—we’ll send them in bleeding.” Former minister Michalis Chrysochoidis has spoken of “lawless enclaves,” while far-right politician Afroditi Latinopoulou condensed centuries of racism into a single televised rant:
“So, I repeat, we cannot, not even here, be a two-speed society. So it cannot be that people come out and talk about vulnerable groups, about gypsies who rob, commit crimes, trade weapons, trade drugs; the camps are no-go zones … They steal electricity, steal from the railways, they rape, they rob the elderly, they break into houses, and we’re still talking about giving them benefits. And I’m not talking about all of them, because I never generalize. But I am talking about the large portion of gypsies who engage in criminal behavior and are champions in crime.”
Afroditi Latinopoulou
When confronted for using the term “Gypsies” — a word long considered a racial slur in Greek — she refused to retract it.
“Whether you call them Roma or whether billions are given to them from Europe, as we’ve been giving them for so many years — because they’ve taken, and oh, have they taken, funds and pampering and everything’s just fine. Have you seen them integrate anywhere?”
European Union funds for Roma inclusion have often been mismanaged, misdirected, or left unused, fueling cycles of poverty, inadequate housing, and marginalization. In some cases, funds intended for integration finance segregation, like container camps in Romania or the failure to build inclusive schools in Greece.
But Latinopoulou’s remarks, though framed as an extreme outburst, reveal a deeper pattern of entrenched stereotypes in Greek society. Persistent labels — portraying Roma as “living off benefits,” “unwilling to integrate,” or “inherently criminal” — do more than stigmatize; they function as instruments of exclusion, shaping how the state administers welfare, enforces policing, and defines citizenship.
“When you type the word ‘Roma’ on Google, all you see are stories about delinquent behavior.” says George Nikolaou, “It’s extreme targeting driven by prejudice—it’s hate speech. They portray us as scapegoats, as perpetrators in society, as offenders; they reproduce criminal stereotypes. If a young Roma insults a cop, does that really need to become a major news story? They publish articles that stigmatize and lump an entire community together.”
And he adds: “People are driven to this ‘criminality’ by problems: lack of housing, lack of education, lack of stable jobs. I didn’t wake up one day as a criminal; society shapes you this way.”
A young boy leans out of a worn-out car, while a woman sweeps her yard in a makeshift home. Photo contributed by Sophia Potsi.
Prejudice also affects employment. The same story is repeated again and again: employers vanish once they learn where someone lives. Some lose jobs after their background becomes known.
“I hide my address for job applications,” Giannis says. “When people know I live in the settlement, they get scared. I want to grow, to get a proper job, to live with dignity.”
“Just from my color alone, they don’t hire me. I’ve gone to many shops here — I won’t mention names. They tell me, ‘yes, we’ll call you,’ but they never do. And then I find out — because my friends work there, though I never told the owners that — that they said, ‘we won’t hire him, because he’s a Gypsy, and he might cause some trouble in the shop, and his people might come and make a scene.’”
Giannis Katsaris
As members of the community stress, the most pressing issue for them remains simply finding work.
“And actually, let me tell you, the first thing is work. Because I need to have a job — to buy clothes for my child so they can go to school, to buy books, to be able to support them. Because if I send them with torn shoes, they’ll call them a Gypsy. If I send them with torn clothes, they’ll call them a Gypsy. The first thing they should look at for us is work. Second, education. Third, housing,” Nikos Katsaris explains.
Employment, education, and housing are tightly intertwined.
“Housing without work has no meaning,” says Kostas Efthimiou. He explains that while the municipality rented homes for Roma families, the main challenge that emerged was how these families could sustain themselves. “No one can live solely on the support of the municipal food bank, nor can they survive only on welfare benefits,” he adds.
Education faces similar obstacles. The issue of schooling and education among Roma children has many layers. It begins with how children learn and continue with how their classmates perceive them, with teachers that are not trained to educate them, and other parents that view them as threats to their children. But as it is said again, the center of this issue seems to be the matter of the settlements.
“You can create 500 literacy and support programs for children,” says Efthimiou.
“But is there any chance a child will study when they return to a shack? Where sometimes there’s no electricity, no personal space, no desk … What I mean is that if there isn’t some kind of order — and in my opinion, the first step is the dismantling of the settlements and the ghettos — if you don’t solve that problem, you can’t talk about anything else.”
Kostas Efthimiou, Deputy Mayor for Social Solidarity at the Municipality of Chalandri
Real change requires more than temporary fixes. EU directives emphasize relocating Roma from informal settlements into integrated neighborhoods with access to housing, utilities, and social services. The goal is not only to move people but to dismantle structural isolation and provide access to schools, healthcare, and employment.
But on this point even when Roma families leave the settlements, the stigma follows them. In Chalandri, a Roma family which had relocated into an apartment became the target of relentless harassment. Neighbors filed repeated complaints — even to the European Union and the Anti–Money Laundering Authority — in an effort to drive them out of the neighborhood. Health inspectors were sent multiple times, only to find nothing wrong, while the local police station received ongoing reports. Eventually, residents went so far as to organize a neighborhood association.
“Most of the time, I feel that the camp is a ghetto. But there are also many times when I feel that everyone else is the ghetto.” Desiotou adds, “I mean, let’s suppose that tomorrow, with a magic wand, we fix all the conditions here — everyone gets their subsidies, all the Roma become model citizens, even scouts. Are all the rest of us ready to welcome them?”
“We say they want to integrate, but we are the ones who have to integrate them. They say they want to work — do you hire them? No. You go to eat at a shop, they make food — a Roma? No. We say, they should go to school — do you want a Roma classmate for your child? No. We say, they shouldn’t live in a settlement, with free electricity and water — do you rent them a house? No. You want them as neighbors? No. So, what, are we just going to vanish them?”
Elena Desiotou, mediator at the Municipality of Chalandri
For the Roma, the issue of the neighborhood is pressing. Specifically, in Gerakas and in Chalandri, there are local citizens’ associations that operate with the aim of improving the neighborhood. However, with a quick search of these associations and their Facebook pages we can see that their discourse when addressing the Roma is anything but neutral or the tone of a mere “concerned citizen.” There are official posts from the Hellenic Police showing images of arrested Roma accompanied by comments from the members of the team such as “The good kids who live among us,” and with rhetoric as extreme as “Burn them in ovens.”
For Nikos Katsaris, these barriers shape daily life:
“Give me water so the child can be clean. Give me electricity. When a society spits on you, how will you react? When you are excluded from everywhere, what will come out of you? Bitterness and anger. When you’re not wanted at school, not wanted at work, not wanted as a neighbor, when no one wants to speak to me, what do you expect me to become? A good person? When I have three children who are hungry — one, two, five, ten days — and I can’t find work, what am I supposed to do?”
Nikos Katsaris
**For more media from Greece, see our Greece archive page. **
Related:
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Calls for Justice for Nikos Sampanis Renewed [Nov. 2022]
Roma in Greece Face a History of Exclusion, Exploitation and Racism [April 2022]
**Greek Police Kill Teenager as Racism, Violence Against Roma People Spikes **[March 2022]
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**Published November 10, 2025