In less than two years in office, the Government of the City of Buenos Aires has recovered 500 properties that were illegally occupied and returned them to their legitimate owners, as part of a security policy that, according to Head of Government Jorge Macri, 'is based on enforcing the law and defending private property.' 'In Buenos Aires, it had become normal to coexist with illegally occupied properties. We have taken a very clear stance: to enforce the law and defend private property. Drug dealing, human trafficking, criminals hiding, and neighborhood robberies are multiplying. That is why we will never justify a crime or relativize the law. We will defend and maintain that tranquility: we will not tolerate any property being occupied again,' Macri added. The 500th operation was carried out yesterday in an old hotel located at Chile 1228, in the Monserrat neighborhood, which was occupied by people subletting rooms in precarious conditions, without access to basic services and with severe structural damage. The intervention came after a complaint from Luciana Palacio, the heir to the property, who reported that the place had been occupied for 18 years. The complaint for usurpation was filed on August 19 with the Prosecutor's Office No. 21 and led to a joint operation led by the City Police, along with personnel from Public Space, Urban Hygiene, Emergencies, Firefighters, and the Care Network. 'When a property is occupied, everything that happens around it is bad. Behind every property there is a story, a family, a neighbor who recovered what was theirs. In the previous administration, they did 30 a year, at most.' The 'Elephant White,' a 12-story, three-body building located at Olazábal 3432, had been occupied for six decades and was vacated in January of this year. Among the most prominent cases, the city executive also managed to recover the Blaquier House in the Historic Quarter, the 'Gallery of Terror' in Nueva Pompeya—occupied for 20 years—a part of the Bonpland Market in Palermo, and a 2,500-square-meter plot on Paseo Colón and San Juan that was irregularly used as a sports field by the Independent Movement of Retirees and Unemployed (MIJD). This is in addition to properties returned to their owners in different neighborhoods of the city such as Constitución, San Telmo, Flores, Almagro, La Boca, Villa Crespo, Barracas, Once, and Villa del Parque, where the plot known as 'La Lechería' was located.
