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Vice Blog

DEAR VICE - I WANT MY ROOM BACK

Dear Vice,
You know those mornings you wake up with a hangover to find your hallway littered with street signs that you drunkenly brought home the night before? Well this is kind of like that, but instead of finding a traffic cone in my kitchen I found a family of homeless Romanian immigrants in my bed. They're really nice and it was kind of funny at first, but they’ve been here for over two weeks now and I’m getting pretty sick of them.

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Seventeen days ago me and my flatmate reached out to a homeless young mother and her two sons. They were riding on the night bus just to keep warm. We felt really bad for them so we invited them to stay the night at our squat.

The family consists of 37-year-old mum Anca and her two sons, Stefan, 12, and Pirvu, 9.  They don't like talking about their father for some reason. They arrived in the UK two months ago. At first they were living in some shithole flat in Brixton which Anca, in her pigeon English, describes as having "no stove and Satan as landlord."

Their landlord mysteriously disappeared three weeks ago, just before the council came knocking on the door and declared the building uninhabitable. They were left with no place to stay and had been living on the streets of South London ever since.

When we asked the family to stay at our place I didn't think that they would still be here over two weeks later. Please don't think I'm being cruel for wanting them to leave. Believe me, I'm all up for doing a good deed, but I didn't know what I was letting myself in for.

First they ate my eggs. Then they started hogging the kitchen to make potato and pretzel soup (photo). As Anca insists on home schooling the kids (which is kind of ironic considering they're homeless), they've also taken over the living room for "learning time." She even took down my painting of a penis because it was "inappropriate." The other night Anca told me in a firm voice: "No swearing around the children and could you please not play your instruments after 11 o'clock?"

The Romanian singing in harmony thing they do was cute to begin with, but it's got to stop. It’s maddening. I mean, I’ve been sleeping on the couch for two weeks now. They're taking the piss.

To be honest, I'm starting to think that maybe they aren't who they say they are. Isn't Romania in the EU? Why don't they just apply for government benefits? And why, instead of working or going to school, do they just sit in the house all day making weird food and talking about how bad Britain is?

I keep trying to hint that they should leave, but they don't get it, preferring instead to look sad-eyed and smile at me as if I'm some sort of Mother Theresa. I'm sorry Anca, Stefan and Pirvu, but you'll have to go. This is a squat, not a refugee camp. I want my fucking room back.

GNARLEY SCIORTINO