Government
Life in an Athens Housing Complex
A complicated tangle of property rights, squatters, and disrepair.
The eight-building Prosfygika housing complex in central Athens has managed to survive years of deterioration, redevelopment plans and threats of demolition.
The facilities, built in the 1930s, were meant to accommodate Greeks who left Turkey as part of the 1923 population exchange between the two nations after WWI. It has since become a centrally located eyesore. The visibly worn structure is covered in graffiti and also shell marks from the country's civil war.