Days after a building collapse in Germasogeia killed two people and left dozens homeless, displaced tenants gathered outside the rubble on Tuesday holding handwritten signs reading “Please help” and “We lost our home and everything.” They said they were never warned the structure was dangerous.
One resident, who had been paying €950 a month for a second-floor studio, said his passport, identity documents and life savings were buried beneath the concrete. Germasogeia Deputy Mayor Christos Papamichael described the situation as a dire humanitarian crisis, saying survivors had lost their most basic belongings instantly and now lacked the means to manage their daily needs.
A public dispute broke out between local and state authorities over emergency housing. Amathus Municipality stepped in on Tuesday to host survivors until Sunday after what it described as a withdrawal of state support. Civil Defence pushed back, saying 18 people had been provided with hotel accommodation and essential supplies in coordination with the Cyprus Red Cross from the moment of the accident, and that nine remain in state-funded hotel units. The government will continue covering those costs until the Deputy Ministry of Social Welfare secures long-term housing solutions, officials said. The other nine original tenants left the hotel without notifying authorities, Civil Defence added.
The collapse, however, did not come without warning — and neither will the next one. Around 270,000 buildings in Cyprus are over 25 years old, maintenance is left entirely to individual owners, and there is still no law requiring buildings to be inspected.
The scale of the problem
Statistics Service data, last updated on August 9, 2024, lay out the problem in numbers. Some 114,436 homes were built before 1981 — meaning the youngest among them is now at least 45 years old. A further 155,759 were built between 1981 and 2000, putting even the most recent in that cohort at 25 to 26 years old.
The breakdown: 1,440 homes predate 1919; 7,874 were built between 1919 and 1945; 19,133 between 1946 and 1960; 85,989 between 1961 and 1980; and 155,759 between 1981 and 2000. Between 2001 and 2010 a further 136,404 were built, followed by 30,331 between 2011 and 2015 and 45,831 between 2016 and 2021. For 8,784 buildings no year of construction was declared.
Why Cyprus is more exposed
In other countries, buildings of similar or greater age are kept standing through periodic maintenance. In Cyprus, maintenance is not mandatory. It depends entirely on the owner — which is why ETEK has been calling for mandatory structural inspections for approximately ten years.
Two further factors make the situation worse. The first dates to 1974. When the Republic of Cyprus lost control of the Pentadaktylos quarries after the Turkish invasion, the construction sector lost a high-quality source of building materials. In the years that followed, beach gravel was used in thousands of buildings — often without being washed to remove sea salt. This is cited as one of the main reasons for balcony collapses, particularly in Limassol.
The second concerns seismic standards. Between 1981 and 1990, before Cyprus’s seismic regulations came into force in 1994, some 85,503 homes were built — representing 20% of the total housing stock at the time. A further 70,094 were built between 1991 and 2000, after the seismic code existed but before mandatory supervision was introduced in 1999.
What the refugee estate data reveals
The KtiZO scheme offers a measure of what systematic inspection finds. Laboratory checks of 358 apartment blocks in government refugee housing estates showed that 43 — 12% — were deemed fit for demolition, with another 70 requiring extensive reconstruction.
A former Town Planning official pointed out that refugee estate buildings had at least some form of supervision during construction — meaning conditions in the broader private stock are no better, and possibly worse. If that holds, many buildings across Cyprus, particularly apartment blocks, require inspection or structural support.
A law that never passed
The problem, as the data make clear, should have been addressed years ago. ETEK’s calls went unheeded. An attempt at legislative regulation by Labour Minister Marinos Mousiouttas, when he was still an MP, stalled mid-process. The Interior Minister supported the bill and a government building inspection law was announced — but it was never submitted.
On September 26, 2024, the chairman of the House Interior Committee, Aristos Damianou, wrote to the Interior Minister asking for a written update, noting that the bill touched directly on public safety and health. He reminded the minister that parliament had been told on September 28, 2023 that “the bill will be put out again for consultation with all involved parties and subsequently submitted to the plenary in due course.”
It was not. The failure to act also reflects private interests: owners who rent buildings without carrying out costly maintenance benefit from the absence of any legal requirement to do so.
With parliament facing dissolution, there is now insufficient time to pass the relevant legislation even if the will exists.
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