The neighbourhood of Sachtouri Street

The ownership of the abandoned houses of the departing Ottoman residents was transferred first to the Greek State and then to the National Bank which later auctioned them off. In the meantime, the properties were managed by the Public Properties Office, to which the new residents would commonly recur to report unsanitary living conditions and emerging conflicts, to ask for leniency in cases of illegal house extensions and complain about the high rents.    

Whether they were two- and three-story residences or single-room dwellings abutting the walls, most of the houses on Sachtouri Street at the time were in a state of disrepair. Before the exchange, the spacious, well-maintained residences most probably belonged to affluent Muslims and the smaller houses to people from lower economic strata. However, the situation changed with the arrival of the refugees. Each family had to make do with one room, whether it was in a hovel or a mansion. Illiterate unaccompanied women would submit their applications in simple, misspelled Greek, while formerly well-off merchants would submit theirs in perfect formal language and written in cursive. Regardless of the applicant’s status, the demands were always the same: one more room, better living conditions, more affordable rent. 

‘Mr. Director, because I am a refugee and live outdoors, I beseech you to please grant me the above mentioned room…’

 ‘With all due respect, I wish to report that […] I lived in Prusa and was employed as an importer of food products and a representative for a cigarette factory […], having abandoned my mobile assets in the form of merchandise, I also abandoned immobile assets in Neapolis, Syllata and Constantinople. Upon arrival here, I settled in a room which used to belong to some exchangeable Turk…’

 ‘…as there was no place to wash the dresses, I made a small washing room out of tin cans. Ten days ago, people from the local office came and tore it down…’

 ‘I happen to be a widow who has no guardian, but is the guardian of my 80-year-old mother and my sister who is also a widow. The three of us, three unprotected women, live in a small room. As we have fallen into extreme poverty […] we request that we be exempt from what is for us an exorbitant rent.’ 

‘…the stipulated monthly rent is positively excessive, since the room housing my family is so small it can hardly be called a room, but a pantry.’

‘I am a refugee, wife to an invalid, sick, elderly man, with whom I live in a sunless, dank room […] I am unable to pay 50 drachmas in rent. I beseech you to require a lower rent that I will be able to afford as a poor, elderly woman. Signed: The applicant, illiterate’

References

Maria Pazarli, ‘To the Directorate of the Public Properties Office’ in Land Property Stories from the Archive of the Land Property Service of the Municipality of Thessaloniki, EKEPP-EKECHAK Publications –National Map Library, Thessaloniki 2008