Today, huge state resources were spent on the forced eviction of one family from the block of flats located on Kekelidze Street: hundreds of police officers, who confronted protesters and ensured the forced eviction, the unit of the Emergency Situations Coordination and Urgent Assistance Service and rescuers with special equipment - the State allocated disproportionate amounts of human and financial resources to evict one family and to satisfy the interests of one lender.

In many cases, the agreements concluded between the lender and the debtor are made on completely unfair and unequal terms. Despite the fact that cases of the loss of housing due to loans are so frequent that this issue has already become a social problem and one of the main causes of homelessness in the country, the State does not use any legislative lever to regulate the unfair money lending.

It is important that the State avoids not only regulating the lending process, but also does not take responsibility for the homeless people evicted from their last place of residence. Despite the fact that, according to the Constitution of Georgia, the State must take care of providing a person with decent housing, the State does not yet have a housing policy that would offer shelter or other solutions to homeless people.

The number of law enforcement officers involved in today’s eviction process reached about 200. Clashes took place between the people gathered in solidarity with the evicted family and the enforcement police several times, during which the patrol police arrested 20 people, including journalists. The Ministry of Internal Affairs has not made a statement about the grounds for the arrests or interference with journalistic activities. In some cases, the detainees had physical injuries. People at the protest rally indicated physical violence from the police.

The Democracy Research Institute calls on:

• The Special Investigation Service - to study the legality of the actions of law enforcement officers and to respond appropriately to the alleged cases of the use of disproportionate force;
• The Public Defender of Georgia - to get interested in the mentioned developments, including in the situation of the detainees;
• The Parliament of Georgia - to change the unfair legislation regulating mortgage loans, which allows the loss of the last residence.