#Save Prosfygika

For 16 years, the Community of Squatted Prosfygika in Athens has existed as one of the largest self-organised neighborhoods in Europe. Today, the Community faces escalating state repression and a plan of eviction. This time appears to be the most serious and is about to be implemented immediately. We are answering to this with a self-organised and self-funded restoration plan of the buildings of Prosfygika.

We have already started with a full renovation of our collective Kioski, and carpentry work to renovate the windows and doors and other wooden elements. Every repaired window, renovated balcony and restored facade, strengthens the defence of self-determined communal living against gentrification, displacement and state repression. To continue this work, we urgently need your financial support and international solidarity. 

We especially encourage recurring monthly donations or regular bank transfers, which allow us to sustainably organise the restoration and defence of the neighborhood. 

Payment Methods

Account name: Spenden&Aktionen
IBAN: DE29 5139 0000 0092 8818 06
BIC: VBMHDE5F
Purpose transaction note: SaveProsfygika
(City for interational transactions: Gießen, Germany)

A Long and Ongoing History of Resistance and Struggle Against State and Capitalist Oppression

The Community of Squatted Prosfygika exists in eight historical apartment blocks in the center of Athens, originally built between 1933 and 1936 to house refugees from Asia Minor. Today, the neighborhood is home to around 400 inhabitants from 27 countries, speaking more than 20 languages, with different religions, ideologies, ages, and backgrounds. Grounded in solidarity, mutual aid, communal ownership, and horizontality, Prosfygika has become one of the largest self-organised and liberated neighborhoods in Europe. The community of Prosfygika shows how collective self-organisation and communal life is possible, even in increasingly precarious times. 

For the past 15 years, Prosfygika have hosted, housed, fed, and supported thousands of people while successfully building a politically united neighborhood with numerous occupied apartments and more than twenty self-organised structures based on the needs of the inhabitants. The Community includes occupied apartments, collective kitchens, political and social spaces, support structures, and solidarity initiatives open to everyone. Beyond its social character, the community of Prosfygika has consistently stood on the front line of social, political, class-based and internationalist struggles as militants from Greece, Europe, and revolutionary organizations from Turkey and Kurdistan also reside within the Community. 

But as the Community grows stronger, so does the repression against it.

The expansion of corporate “megaprojects” and aggressive gentrification in Athens has placed Prosfygika at the center of a totalitarian assault launched by the state and capital. On 16 June 2025, the Ministry of Culture, the Region of Attica, and DYPA (public employment service) secretly signed a contract allocating €15 million of EU funds to “restore” four blocks of the neighborhood while treating them as vacant, intentionally disregarding the 400 residents and avoiding consultation or rehousing obligations. In an interview published on 14 January 2026, the governor of Attica openly confirmed that police-enforced evictions are planned.

The official goals of the contract and narrative claim the buildings will become social housing and accommodation for relatives of patients from a nearby hospital. These claims deliberately ignore reality: the buildings are already inhabited, the Community already functions as social housing, and already opened a guest house for relatives of cancer patients. These arguments serve only as propaganda to legitimise the violent displacement of the current inhabitants and the attack on a self organised community. They deflect from the true intention of accelerating gentrification and handing the neighborhood over to investors instead of the people already living there. 

Over the last decade, this is the fourth major attempt by the state to evict and plunder Prosfygika. This time, however, the threat appears serious and immediate. Two inhabitants and members of the Community, Aristotelis Chantzis and Suzon Doppagne, began hunger strikes on February 5th and May 1st respectively, hunger strikes until death for the defense of life. 

For more than a year, the Community, the Committee for the Promotion and Defense of Prosfygika, together with a growing network of solidarity architects, engineers, archaeologists, academics, and technical workers, have been planning and implementing a self-organised and self-funded restoration plan for the maintenance and restoration of the Prosfigika buildings. The restoration work carefully respects the original modernist Bauhaus-inspired architecture of the complex while preserving the neighborhood as a living space of collective struggle, solidarity, and social housing. 

We have already begun restoring windows, doors, and wooden elements through collective carpentry work. Step by step, with collective effort and international solidarity, the restoration of the whole neighborhood will become possible. We estimate the costs for the coming years to amount to several million euros. 

This fundraising campaign is one part of our strategy to organise the necessary funds.

We call on you to support financially on a regular basis, organise solidarity events, and help defend the Community of Squatted Prosfygika. 

FAQ:

We also invite you to come in person to the Community of Squatted Prosfygika in Athens. Visit the neighborhood, participate in the collective works and structures, and experience directly the communal life, solidarity, and resistance that the Community continues to build every day.