An ambitious plan to build 2,500 homes for displaced families and regenerate an area in Athens hit by a powerful earthquake in 1999 has resulted in the completion of just 29 houses while some people still live in temporary camps, Sunday’s Kathimerini has discovered.

A quake measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale struck Athens on September 7, 1999, killing 143 people. The tremor destroyed 1,600 homes in Ano Liosia, northwestern Athens, and severely damaged another 4,400.

As a result, some 30,000 local residents were housed in temporary camps, living in tents or modified shipping containers. A program was launched in 2001 to create 2,500 homes over an area covering 110,000 square meters in Ano Liosia. The plan was meant to revive one of Athens’ poorest neighborhoods.

However, Kathimerini has learned the project never fully materialized. The engineer in charge of the construction, Haim Politis, told Kathimerini that local authorities did not arrange for the land to be given in full to contractors before they began work.

Politis said many earthquake-damaged houses were not knocked down because of legal wrangling and the deeds to some of the land the construction company was meant to build on were never made available.

People whose homes were damaged beyond repair during the earthquake were offered interest-free loans of 163,400 drachmas (479.53 euros) per square meter by the state to fund the building of their new homes. Many families asked for bigger houses than the ones they previously owned, but their loans could not cover this extra cost.

To resolve the impasse, homeowners were given the option of receiving their house fully finished or partially ready. Only 29 people agreed to pay for their new houses to be completed by the contractors.

Another 585 partially built homes were handed over and the rest were never built. There are still 43 temporary camps in Ano Liosia but most earthquake sufferers have moved out, authorities said.