meet ioan and violeta, both 37. they have been married for 11 years and have seven children, aged 7 through 21.
we met them when i noticed their kids playing on the railroad tracks outside their house.
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ioan and violeta are a mixed couple, in that she is a roma and he is not. the family – all nine of them – live in a three-room, 30 m² shack by the rail line that leads into the old abandoned factory. the house, which originally had only one room, was owned by the railroad company before it went out of business.
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ioan added the other two rooms and built a storage space on the roof. (he works in construction, and frequently decamps to england for a few weeks at at time to find work, as there is little work for him in romania.) the house has electricity, but lacks a refrigerator or running water, which was cut off two years ago. every day, the family takes a cart with empty jugs to a standpipe down the road and fills them with water. violeta cooks one meal in a large pot on a stove which sits next to one of the beds (and which serves as the house’s only heating source), and then the family eats the food throughout the day.
ioan and violeta had a lease with the railroad company, but, since the company went bankrupt, the city has been trying to evict them for years and move them to the factory housing where the other roma are. ioan and violeta have avoided eviction so far, but their options for better housing seem non-existant.
COHN17 