No families with children should be evicted from their homes.
This is Stockholm City's zero vision.
Nevertheless, a review of the magazine Hem & Hyra shows that the number of evicted families with children has increased in 2020, both in Stockholm and in the country.
- Last year, 251 families with children were evicted, which is the highest figure in several years.
More than 1,000 children were threatened with eviction, says Ida Karlsson, reporter at Hem & Hyra.
"Nobody feels good"
Jenny's family is one of those threatened with eviction.
Due to the ex-husband's previous rent debt, she has not been able to get a permanent lease.
Now she and the children live in one of the social services' training apartments - a home that has meant a lot to the family.
Despite promises that Jennie and the children will be able to take over the apartment permanently, they will now be evicted.
According to the municipality, the family is no longer entitled to help.
- None of us are well.
It has been going on for a long time and we thought we had received the help we needed, but now we have to start all over again, says Jennie in SVT's Morgonstudion.
The social services can interrupt
In the article in Hem & Hyra, she describes how she and the children were forced to move extremely often before they gained access to the training apartment.
At one point, they all lived in a room of 12 square meters.
- It was terribly stressful.
I stood at night and packed and unpacked, while I tried to be a good mother, says Jennie.
Several researchers and psychologists that Hem & Hyra spoke to are critical of the eviction of Jennie and her family.
- Unsafe housing conditions hit children very hard.
Since the Convention on the Rights of the Child has become law in Sweden, the social services could go in and interrupt the eviction.
It is a tool that they have, but that is rarely used, says Ida Karlsson.