In the apartment, one of the tenants has been accumulating enormous amounts of rubbish, waste and food scraps for a long time. The apartment is dirty and neglected, and the conditions inside are described by neighbours as extremely unhygienic. The accumulated waste attracts insects on warm days, while rodents appear in summer and winter, creating a real epidemiological threat to the entire building.
– This is no longer just about that man. Small children live in the building. We are afraid for their health – desperate residents say.
The Municipal Social Welfare Centre has intervened repeatedly
Despite interventions by the local social welfare centre, the resident always refuses to accept assistance, confirming this with his signature on a statement. The man told a Centre employee that sufficient help was being provided by one of the former residents of Kraśnik Górny and a neighbour. Since March 2022, the institution has taken numerous steps, offering the man assistance.
– We contacted the Municipal Commission for the Prevention and Resolution of Alcohol-Related Problems in Bolesławiec, the District Court in Bolesławiec, the Family Court and the Police Station in Kruszyna – lists Barbara Wolska. – We also corresponded with the building manager and the State District Sanitary Inspector in Bolesławiec. During numerous visits, the resident was offered various forms of help: care services, placement in a Social Welfare Home, and contact details for companies providing property-cleaning services were left with him. Conversations were held to motivate the resident to change his habits and behaviour. All without success – reports the head of the Municipal Social Welfare Centre in Bolesławiec, based in Kruszyna.
Neighbours stress that the apartment’s resident appears to be someone requiring urgent social, medical and psychological assistance.
The man’s children do not respond. Why?
Centre employees established that the resident has several adult children, but do not know where they live. Neighbours managed to contact them.
– We reported the problem to the family. Nothing happened. No one is responding – residents recount.
The tenants are turning to the relevant services and institutions, asking for urgent intervention. They want not only to improve the living conditions of the solitary resident, but also to ensure the safety of the other families in the building.
– We ask you to publicise the matter and help us reach the relevant services and institutions that could provide this man with the necessary social, medical and psychological support. I hope that, thanks to your intervention, it will be possible to improve this resident’s living conditions and ensure the safety of the other tenants – residents add.
This is also a matter for the property manager
The man has not been legally incapacitated and has the right to make decisions independently. He is not homeless either and has the right to live in the apartment. Nor is he living in poverty, as he receives his own pension which, as the Centre explains, exceeds the income threshold qualifying a person for social welfare benefits.
– The Social Welfare Centre has no legal or formal means of obliging or forcing the man to change his way and lifestyle or to clean the apartment he occupies – Barbara Wolska explains. – The obligation to maintain a building in an appropriate hygienic and sanitary condition rests with the owner or manager of the property, as stipulated in Article 22(1) of the Act of 5 December 2008 on the Prevention and Control of Infections and Infectious Diseases in Humans – the Centre’s head adds.
Despite what appears to be a deadlocked situation, employees of the Municipal Social Welfare Centre, bearing in mind the resident’s extremely difficult circumstances, declare that they will continue taking motivational and supportive measures and will attempt further action that could lead to an improvement in the situation.
The editorial team will also attempt to contact the man’s children and the property manager.