Failure to pay rent due to businesses closing abruptly last month because of coronavirus resulted in a family of four being evicted by their landlord from a corrugated iron sheet shack in Katutura on Thursday morning. The family failed to pay their rent of N$1 000 for March.
Shareen Damno, a hairdresser in town, was sent home without payment by her boss due to slow business, while her self-employed boyfriend Christopher Ellman, a windscreen fitter, said business was also slow for the month due to the outbreak of coronavirus.
The couple also owed the landlord an extra N$500 for babysitting their two minor children. With the little money they made, the couple could only buy a combo of food from a local supermarket but promised to pay two months’ rent after the lockdown.
“Around 05h00, the aunty (landlord) told us to move out and she was throwing us with dirty water.
She threw our belongings out of her yard,” narrated the couple, that was directed to Katutura central councillor Ambrosius Kandjii, who temporarily accommodated them at the Katutura Youth Complex. They will be there throughout the lockdown with many other people without shelter from the Khomas region during the lockdown.
“This is the only solution, for now, to have our brains at rest until the lockdown is over because even if we go look for a room now, landlords would want us to pay rent,” said Damno, who expressed worry that if the lockdown is extended, she would not know how they will survive as a family.
She earned N$3 400 per month as a hairdresser at a salon situated in Klein Windhoek, which mostly catered for tourists.