Opened in Athens on the 22nd of April 2016, City Plaza was transformed from a hotel that had been abandoned for eight years into a project which has provided accommodation, food, medical support and education for over 1500 refugees from different countries, including many children, elderly, infirm and vulnerable people.

City Plaza is an alternative to the inhumane conditions of the refugee camps. It houses refugees in the heart of Athens and provides a home in which 400 hundred refugees can live with dignity, safety and privacy; the kind of life not possible in the formal camps and detention centres.

But City Plaza is not only a housing project. It is a political project that proves it is possible to run one of the best housing spaces in Greece without employees, institutional funding or experts and exposes the fact that the state not doing so is a conscious decision. This decision physically and socially isolates refugees, placing them in camps, detention centres and hotspots, as well as reinforcing borders. City Plaza has played a central role in the refugee solidarity movement, leading the international campaign against the EU-Turkey deal, fighting for, and winning refugees’ rights to access education and healthcare.

City Plaza does not receive any funding from governments or NGOs. It is supported entirely by solidarity from Greece and around the world. People from all over the globe come to City Plaza to work and live together with the residents as an expression of their solidarity.

On June 7th, 2017, it was reported by multiple news outlets that City Plaza, as well as Papouchadiko and Zoodochou Pigis 119, two other squats in Athens, are being threatened with eviction. An eviction would result in the 400 plus residents of City Plaza, including over 150 children, being forced to return to the camps or to living on the streets of Athens. It is not only their home that’s under threat but also their safety and wellbeing.

With your solidarity and support we will be able to keep City Plaza open. Please sign and share this petition!

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More about City Plaza:

Best Hotel In Europe (video)

Keep City Plaza Open (video)

A day in the life at City Plaza

We Are City Plaza