EASTERN European migrants are being unfairly labelled as neighbours from hell in Edinburgh because of "ignorance and prejudice", support workers said today.
The Edinburgh Mediation Service has hit out at the number of groundless complaints it receives from Scots about Poles, and other nationalities, living on their doorstep.
The most common complaint is that a house is breaking multiple occupancy laws
by cramming as many people as possible into a confined space.
Unscrupulous landlords have tried to take advantage of some migrants' shortage of money and sheer desperation to find a home in the Capital, by breaching HMO laws.
But the mediation service, which is called in by the council, police and other organisations to help resolve disputes, claims the number of complaints is completely out of proportion to the real extent of the problem.
Christine Schoeck, team leader at ECM, said "several" groundless claims are being made each month.
She added: "Often people don't bother to meet their neighbours and, if they are newcomers, they tend to make assumptions about how many are in a flat, or claim they are making a lot of noise, but it is not correct at all.
"We get people saying there's overcrowding, and that it should not be allowed, and there are more than are allowed to stay in one flat under multiple occupancy rules.
"The truth is a lot of people who resent the fact that they (eastern Europeans) have come make these assumptions.
"Sometimes people say, 'They pretend they don't speak English', which is a bizarre thing to say. In most cases, it is the neighbour showing ignorance and prejudice. It all comes out of not knowing and assuming the worst."
If the EMS is able to get both sides into mediation meetings problems can generally be resolved. However, in a third of cases, so many insults and accusations have been made that one or both parties refuses to talk to the other.
The city council investigates hundreds of city flats over complaints of breaches of HMO laws. In July last year, 433 city properties were under investigation.
In most cases allegations are dropped because they are untrue, or because the council has a policy of working with tenants and landlords to ensure they meet the rules.
However, there was a case of up to 18 Polish workers being crammed into a single two-bedroom property.
Karol Chojnowski, development manager for the Polish community portal Szkocja.net, believes there are also subtle differences in culture that lead to complaints being made.
He said: "We come from a culture where if you want to socialise you would go and visit someone. My parents did not go to the pub in the way Scots their age would have done, they would go visit their uncles and aunts and friends.
"Here, that would create the impression of a higher levels of people traffic going in and out of a place than there actually are."
Mr Chojnowski, 27, who has lived in Scotland for nine years, was himself the victim of false complaints.
He said: "This has happened to me. I used to live in Dalry and I had two brothers coming over to study at Telford College, last summer.
"There was a complaint against me and my girlfriend, who is Scottish, that we were accepting into the flat bigger numbers than we should have."
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www.szkocja.euThe full article contains 571 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
