The home of the homeless: Easter in Sugar Factory district in Sofia

Ivan Radev, Facebook, 20 April 2025

Context of the story: On 15 April 2025, the demolition of illegal houses and shanties in the Zaharna Fabrika (Sugar Factory) district of Sofia began. The area was cordoned off by the police, with a water cannon on site. There were no clashes, but the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee questioned the legality of the actions of the mayor of the Ilinden district, Emil Branchevski, Mediapool reported.

From 15 April 2025 until today – 20 April 2025 – Easter, the residents of the demolished houses have been living in the open air in the area of their homes. Disputes have arisen between municipal administrations in Sofia over where these Roma residents should be housed. At the moment, attempts to find accommodation in other parts of Sofia that would be acceptable to local residents, district administrations and the evicted residents have only been successful in isolated cases, and the majority of the group, estimated at 200 people, remain next to their destroyed homes in the sugar factory.

According to the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, the demolition of the illegal buildings, which began in 2016, is now being carried out in violation of the law. This is because on Friday 11 April 2025 there was a decision by the European Court of Human Rights to provisionally protect some of the buildings. But some of them have already been demolished.

“This means that the law has been broken. From now on the taxpayer will most likely pay the bill, not the violator, of course, and the violator is certainly the district mayor, who, as far as I have understood from the police here, ordered these actions,” Radoslav Stoyanov of the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee told Bulgarian National Radio.

So on 20 April 2025, the evicted residents of the Sugar Factory district celebrated Easter in the open air. Various citizens, organisations and public groups expressed their solidarity with them. Cross-border Talks published the Facebook post of one of them, Ivan Radev, a journalist and a driving force in the Association of European Journalists – Bulgaria.

Ivan Radev’s report:

In the home of the homeless – Easter in the Sugar Factory

It looks like after an earthquake – houses collapsed, almost all belongings buried, and the inhabitants sleep in tents and keep warm with wood from the ruins. But there is one difference – this is not the work of a natural disaster, but the result of human actions. “Look! The state did this! How were they saying: “I love the country, I hate the state,”” a man of about 35 greets me, pointing to the field of piles of bricks, concrete, wood, metal and plastic left from the former homes of dozens of families in the capital’s Sugar Factory neighborhood.

It’s Holy Saturday, approaching sunset, the eve of Easter. The residents of the demolished houses in the Sugar Factory greet me in a friendly but also cautious manner. They wonder what my intentions are. I explain that I have come to see, because on social media there is a lot of writing by people who have never been there and don’t know the case, but they are quick to speak up. I add that I’m a journalist, but I’m not sure if I will write a report or just inform myself. I really didn’t have decided at that moment. But I show journalist Marin, a sort of informal leader, my identity card to assure him that I have nothing to hide.

I recall a conversation with photographer Michaela Vacheva, who works on social issues for some of the world’s biggest publications. Michaela explained that she never goes straight into photography, but always takes the time to get to know people and gain their trust first. “When I walk into a homeless person’s tent, I never forget that this is actually their home and that they welcomed me there,” Michaela said at the time.

Now I am thinking the same thing – visiting these people who have been homeless for a few days. The meadow next to their former homes is their home. The place where they eat, sleep, and raise their children. At first I just sat and tried not to disturb. Everyone was busy doing something. Some were cooking and distributing food, others were walking among the ruins and gathering firewood. A couple of men were carrying a large former wooden electricity pole and a smaller beam from one of the houses. They took huge rusty nails out of a bag and started hammering them into a large wooden cross. “It’s Easter. This is where we welcome the Resurrection,” one man explains. They allow me to photograph them as they make the cross and relax more and more to talk to me.

“They want us to leave. To leave. Let’s go to other countries. But if the gypsies move, who will do the cleaning? Who will dump the containers, who will clean Sofia? The Bulgarians? Let’s see how the Bulgarians will clean for 500 leva? In two weeks, Sofia will be dirtier than here,” another man in his 50s gets angry. I ask if I can mention his name. He refuses – he doesn’t want any trouble.

It turns out it’s not so easy to fasten the two large beams together with just nails, and Marin, the informal leader, instructs us to add small slats – there’s plenty of wood from demolished houses, and the young men are skillfully accomplishing the task. Finally, the cross is ready. Marin orders several people to wear protest T-shirts that say ALL ARE EQUAL on the front and I AM NOT RACIST on the back. People pick up the cross and place it in a hole dug for it. The people gather around the cross and the pastor says a short prayer, asking Jesus to see these people and give them a better future where every family has their own land and home.

I set out to walk around the ruins and before long a host appears, offering to show me around the neighborhood or what’s left of it. He’s 18, but asks me not to mention his name or take pictures of him, as she lives in a social apartment in Lyulin and is afraid of having her name taken away. I’ll call him Dimitar. He lives in the two-room flat he got 11 years ago with his mother and father and his two older brothers, who are married and have families. 11 people in total in two rooms. But he’s not complaining. He’s been working construction since he was 12. When he turned 16 he was given his first contract – before that he couldn’t. Now he has two jobs – cleaning nights, construction days. “I work 7 hours cleaning, even for my pension it’s enough,” says Dimitar. “But because I am fast, and instead of 7, I make the norm for 4”, he boasts. “During the day, I go to construction sites”. He says he has changed schools five times – somewhere he was expelled from, somewhere his mother moved him because he was bullied. He made it through 11th grade, but is determined to enroll in 12th grade after this summer to finish high school. We walk through the piles of construction debris and Dimitarf tells me whose house it was. “This was our couch,” he points to a couch, “when we moved, we gave it to some neighbors”. Dimitar was born in this neighborhood. His grandfather and grandmother still live here, as does his uncle’s family. He had come to collect wood for them. It gets cold at night. A fire needs lighting.

68-year-old Iliya joins us. He was born here. His parents also lived in the neighborhood. He shows me his house. Or rather the ruins. There’s part of a brick wall left. I notice that the press says that shacks and tin buildings have been demolished, and Iliya shows me the brick wall and points out that the foundation is a concrete slab. Apparently it was a massive building.

“They showed up at 5:20. At least 500 cops were there. It’s like we’re the biggest criminals in the state. They woke us up and told us we had an hour to move out. We had almost everything we owned left. Washing machines, stoves, refrigerators – everything,” says Iliya. Dimitar says he was working the night shift cleaning and had just finished when he got a call from his uncle that houses were being demolished. “I came here – adults were crying, children were screaming. There were policemen mocking people and threatening not to let them take anything from their houses,” he says.

We walk through the rubble and see the remains of things buried, evidence of buried lives. If we look through the bricks and plaster, we find a broken vacuum cleaner, toothpaste, part of a video camera, children’s toys and more. Most of the children’s toys are stained with building dust, but I notice a very clean plush smurf among the brick. I wondered if it had been in someone’s crib that morning and had been abandoned still warm from a baby’s cuddle when people had to quickly leave their homes.

Along paths only they know, through the rubble, people pass, coming or going to the other side of the small neighborhood. They explain to me that the houses there are legal and that there is the little church where the children sleep at night. The street over there is Suhodol Street No. 11 and many people’s identity cards have this address, because the same street here, but with the number 3, was deleted as an address by the municipality in 2016. “We were forced to get ID cards with different addresses, because you can’t work in Bulgaria without an ID card,” explains a woman who joined us. We see children wandering through the rubble, returning with only a kitten or a dog. “There are many of them and we rescue them,” explains Atanas, 7, as he poses with another finger in his hand.

I am careful not to photograph people, as I know that some of the residents are afraid that publicity could harm them and make their situation even more desperate. As I try to take a photo of a child from the back, his mother tells me to take it myself, and he convinces me not to. Yavor is 4 years old and looking at a children’s book, surrounded by several dogs in front of the makeshift tent that serves as home to his grandparents’ family, his mother and father, his aunt and uncle. His mother, Donka, says her eldest son, Peter, is in second grade at nearby Primary School 113. “He hasn’t been to school since Tuesday. How can I let him go when there is nowhere to wash here? And where will he learn his lessons? His homeroom teacher called me and said she understands our situation and won’t grade him for last week’s absences. But what are we going to do from Tuesday, I don’t know,” she wonders. Her husband, Vasil, who supports the family by working in construction, also arrives, putting up drywall. “We work and we are still poor,” he explains. Many of the men work in construction – ironically, they build Sofia, and they are left without the houses they built themselves, probably because of the builders’ lust for municipal land. It’s like that saying about the cobbler going barefoot.

“They say we stole – but if we stole, we would have bought apartments,” says one of the small crowd now gathered around us. “Ah, don’t do that – we are gypsies – a terrible scourge. If you point your finger at us, we’ll bite your hand off. Don’t you think so?”, another asks me. I reply that more than an hour ago I left the bicycle with which I came on the other side of the ruins, and I’m sure I’ll find it there. ”And you can leave it all night. No one will touch it here,” says Vasil. Everyone in the neighborhood often emphasizes that they are believers and bear Bulgarian names. But it burdens them that they often face racism.

I ask many people if they’ve been offered temporary accommodation, as Sofia Deputy Mayor Nadezhda Bacheva wrote – most deny that anyone ever offered it. We also heard several different options mentioned. One is a nearby temporary accommodation center, which I am told is dangerous for children. They also tried to place someone in Lyulin. Vasil says there were huge rats there. ”We don’t mind, we were going to clean it up, make it our own, but the mayor of Lulin came and told the mayor of Ilinden district that this is not the way to do it and that he can’t demolish people’s houses without having warned and talked to the other mayors about where he will put them,” he says. The third option is Botunets, where the building was without windows and glass and without electricity and water. “How can you live like that?” people are perplexed.

I ask them if it’s true that they don’t accept these options because they want to stay in a hotel, as the deputy mayor from the liberal Democratic Bulgaria party wrote. ”Yes, yes, a hotel! Luxury is what we are looking for!”. They laugh in unison, but quickly get over the ridicule and start to get annoyed that politicians are constantly lying to them and taking advantage of them. ”The state is on that fat head – Peevski. He gives the orders. No wonder he has his eye on this land,” says one man. ”They accuse us of voting for Peevski. This is not true. I don’t vote. Who should I vote for?”, says Donka. And I’m thinking that they don’t have much choice, since the previous GERB administration erased their addresses, and the current one, in the person of district mayor Emil Branchevski, nominated by Save Sofia, tore down their houses. It is easy to understand that the opinion about Branchevski in the neighborhood is very negative. 

”The previous mayor lied too, but this one beats them all,” Dimitar tells me. According to him, the mayor is trying to create divisions between people by shouting some of them aside and offering to put them in social housing if they keep quiet. But so far they all refuse, arguing that “it’s housing for all or housing for none”. “The Strasbourg court, the highest court, said not to demolish the houses, and he demolished them,” Iliya adds, wondering what kind of doctor the district mayor is since he lacks humanity. Dimitar claims that the mayor is being set up by three women from the neighboring blocks who hate Roma and organize petitions and protests against them. “These are very bad women. Two are blonde and one has short hair,” he points out. He says they are now very happy. One of them turned on “Hello, Bulgaria” and is happy and thanks the mayor. Today I looked on TikTok and everyone is talking about our houses, says Donka.

The hope of people in the neighborhood is that Bulgaria will be forced to pay millions of euros for the illegally demolished houses, and with this money they will be able to buy land and build legal houses. Everyone’s wish is to have normal homes – children to go to school and adults to work. ”They say that we don’t pay taxes and that we live on your backs. And I want to ask: what taxes exactly do you pay me – do you pay my car tax, do you pay my electricity, do you pay my VAT when I shop at the store or do you bring me food in the evening when I have to feed my family?” a 50-year-old man resigned. He says Bulgarians will now really have to pay up after the country was condemned in Strasbourg for the illegal actions of the local government. People are excited at the thought of receiving money with which to secure proper housing. According to some, a lawsuit has already been filed for 37 million, but they are not sure whether the amount is in euros or leva. Others, however, are quickly coming back to reality and say that this is far away and that what is more important is what solution the local administration will propose on Tuesday. They hope that they will be offered minimum conditions that will allow them to work and their children to go to school. I ask them if it is true that people from other neighborhoods have moved in with them in the hope that they will get social housing. “How will we allow that?” – Vassil gets agitated – How are we going to allow someone who doesn’t live here to get housing and my wife and children to stay on the streets? If they came, wouldn’t we evict them ourselves?” According to him, the municipality knows exactly who lives here, although no one is listed at this address for the simple reason that there is no such address registration. Iliya adds that people come, but only to help – they bring water, food, baby diapers. They are good people, thank God, and we are grateful.

As we speak, a rainbow appears over the shattered ghetto, illuminated by the last rays of sunshine before Easter. Conversations around the bonfire by the cross gradually liven up, people seem to forget their plight, even if only for a short while, it is a celebration. I thank them and tell them I have to go, and they say, “Why? Stay here and sleep, see what it’s like.”

At that moment I remember that last Saturday at the same time I was in Boyana. I had gone to see what was going on near the barracks, which Dogan had briefly recaptured and which are now in the possession of Peevski’s loyalists. I have often wondered how the public remains indifferent when someone builds palaces that we all know are the result of corruption and abuse of power, and how intolerant we prefab people, we people with credit, are of those who are much closer to our social standing than the grand corruption we witness. How easy it is to dehumanize the Roma and the refugees and to believe some politicians that they want to live in a hotel, that is to say to live better than us. And as a result, we start to hate.

This week, at a conference in Sofia, which we at the Association of European Journalists co-organized, Arva Damon, a former CNN journalist and now an aid worker, said, “No war can begin unless it is preceded by the dehumanization of the enemy. For no nation can accept the scale of death and destruction that any war brings if it sees those who suffer as it does.”

So, if you don’t want to participate in this dehumanization, take an egg today and go celebrate the holiday with the people of the Sugar Factory. They need someone to talk to – there are no psychologists on the ground to help them cope with the trauma and any conversation is helpful. Just be mindful, remember that they have no home other than the clearing and that you are visiting them. Visiting the home of the homeless.

Photo: Crushed children’s belonging (source: Ivan Radev)

Subscribe to Cross-border Talks’ YouTube channel! Follow the project’s Facebook and Twitter page! And here are the podcast’s Telegram channel and its Substack newsletter!

Like our work? Donate to Cross-Border Talks or buy us a coffee!

About The Author