The association criticised the latest plan of the Ivo Sanader Cabinet to provide with housing the returnees, former tenancy rights holders living in areas that were not directly affected by the 1991-1995 war.
The proposal about housing in state-owned flats whom returnees can occupy as lessees until their death and which their children cannot inherit is branded by the SDF as an unhuman and unfair solution to sufferings which refugees have experienced for years.
According to the press release, this proposal is aimed at inflicting new injustice on returnees.
The SDF says it can be noticed that a prevailing opinion in Croatia is that Serb returnees should be given limited right to home and that the Government acts in a market-oriented and cost-efficient fashion only when dealing with problems about the return of Serbs or the reconstruction and restitution of their property.
A few days ago, the Croatian Government announced its plan to build over the next five years 3,600 apartments and purchase another 400 for Serb returnees, former tenancy rights holders living in areas that were not directly affected by the 1991-1995 war.
Preparations will be completed by the end of this year, and about 120 apartment buildings will be constructed by the end of 2011, with about 3,600 apartments for lease on a public-private partnership basis, the Minister of Transport and Development, Bozidar Kalmeta, said at a government session last Friday at which a housing programme for this category of people was adopted.
The ministry has received 4,425 applications for property restitution filed by people who previously lived in so-called socially-owned apartments, and has assessed that about 4,000 apartments need to be built or bought, Kalmeta said.
The government has to secure a total of 3.07 billion kuna for the implementation of this project, and the costs of construction would be repaid over a period of 25 years. Annual costs are estimated at 123 million kuna, and the ministry has already secured about 35 million kuna for this year.
The returnees would be given the status of privileged tenants and pay privileged rent which currently amounts to 2.54 kuna per square metre.
The apartments will be state-owned, they will not be for sale and cannot be inherited, so that the government will be able to use them in dealing with welfare cases, Construction Minister Marina Matulovic Dropulic said.