Gordana Vukobat (29) is one of the many internally displaced persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina who had to move out of her home during the conflicts in the 1990s. She came to Banja Luka in 1992, together with her parents and an older sister. She was seven years old at the time, and has a very vivid memory of their family house, which was built out of the money her father had earned after working for many years in Slovenia. They stayed for a while in a collective accommodation in Banja Luka, and then in Gornja Ljubovia, in army barracks adapted for a temporarily lodging of people who had lost their homes.

Gordana’s father found a job and they managed to rent an apartment; after a while, her parents bought a land plot in Prijedor and built a small house. At that time, Gordana met her husband, also an internally displaced person from the same town, Sanski Most. They decided to start a new life together. Unfortunately, the only accommodation that the municipality could offer was a 130-year-old state-owned house, one in a row of many, with the railway passing right behind the house.  This old and humid two-room accommodation has been the home of the four-member family for the past seven years. Gordana says that the humidity affects the children’s health: the four-year-old Dragan is very often sick and his 11-year-old sister has a running nose and a heavy cough most of the year.

The Vukobrat family has been applying for a new apartment for years; they have sent dozens of applications without result. Last year, they heard about the Regional Housing Programme and the possibility to get an apartment in the new building in Prijedor, the construction of which started in the autumn of 2016.

“We decided to try one more time and finally succeeded! We have been promised that we can move to the new apartment by the end of 2017.”