ONLY 11 out of 48 property owners have complied with Nicosia Municipality’s notice that they must carry out support works on their dangerous buildings so that they no longer pose a safety hazard.
The municipality started issuing notices last year. The first two rounds of deadlines expired last August. A study has just started to evaluate how the works will be done. It will probably be another year before the support works are completed on those first batches of buildings. The whole project is funded by a loan by the municipality amounting to more than €5.5 million.
About 80 more out of 160-strong owners of dangerous buildings have been asked by letter to protect passers-by and their property by contracting support works on their property within Nicosia Municipality. The next deadline is up at the end of March.
“About half of property owners used to comply. Now, it seems that fewer do,” executive engineer for Nicosia Municipality, Irene Antoniou, said. She was referring to previous projects undertaken since the passing of a 1990 law stating that action must be taken by the Municipality to prevent the collapse of dangerous buildings.
Asked why owners were not complying with the notices, DISY’s Nikos Nouris, president of the Town Planning Commision and Green party’s Stelios Colocassides, also a Planning Commission member, both replied that there are simply not enough incentives.
“Abandonment is what you see in Nicosia, Nouris added.
However, the image of old Nicosia as an abandoned entity is not one shared universally.
“This impression some people have about Nicosia being all derelict and abandoned is misleading and simply not true,” said Nicosia-based architect Savvas Christofides, who is working closely with listed buildings. “Listed buildings are now very valuable and developers have been buying them in bulk in order to fix them up and rent them. A square metre of land can be worth up to €1,700. A three-bedroom house just around the corner is renting for €2,500 a month. There is a lot of demand for these buildings.
“The real problem is that the Municipality is dealing with property which belongs to the Church, Turkish Cypriots, or has multiple owners,” he added.
In such cases, Nicosia Municipality can still go ahead with support works as provided by law, but no further work can be done on the buildings themselves, even though individual Greek Cypriots can rent a Turkish Cypriot-listed building and still receive government funding in order to renovate it.
Currently, those planning to live in a listed building needing to be repaired can get up to half of the total amount spent back and receive building coefficient benefits.
The Municipality’s current policy has been ongoing since the passing of the 1990 legislation on dangerous constructions. Dangerous buildings are continuously monitored and listed. Support works are carried out immediately when necessary. Otherwise, the Municipality initiates a series of steps beginning with notifying owners and giving them two months to respond, and ending with the carrying out of building support works.
Nicosia Municipality informs owners that their property has been declared dangerous to the public by letter, as the legislation states.
The letter is either hand delivered or else, where the owner or owners cannot be located, a warning is affixed to the building itself. The owners usually have at least two months to comply with the request to contract building support works.
However, there have been cases of letters pushed under the door or notices displayed on buildings with residents in them.
If owners ignore the notice, then the Municipality will complete all necessary works and charge the owners, with a 25-per cent surcharge on total expenses.
In the meantime, the property’s deeds are frozen at the Land Registry Office until the owners pay back the Municipality, meaning that the property cannot be sold or transferred and no further works can be done on it.
The whole process can take up to a year and a half because Nicosia Municipality goes ahead with two separate tenders. First, for a study to establish how to pursue the support works and second, with the actual works.
The Municipality has divided up the buildings into seven categories according to location. Each group includes 20 to 25 houses. The first two groups were located within the old Venetian walls. Owners of buildings in the first five groups have already been notified. There remain the areas of Kaimakli, Paliouriotissa and Ayioi Omologites.
“Our architectural heritage is an irreplaceable expression of the wealth of our cultural heritage,” a member from the Town Planning Department stressed.
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