PESCARA – “The drama of housing insecurity is an issue that seriously affects the maintenance of the social balance of our cities. The topic has disappeared from the political agenda and, in this context, we would like to point out that from the Roundtable for the definition of a “Housing Plan”, launched at the headquarters of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport by the Minister Matteo Salvini, the Tenants Union and all other tenant unions were excluded. In this way, preventing the representatives of precarious housing workers and any beneficiaries of the Housing Plan from making a significant contribution to responding to the real needs of the families concerned”. This is what we read in a note to the prefect of the Pescara Tenants Union.
“Yet we have concrete proposals to resolve the emergency and to deal with the housing crisis”, continues the note, “in the Budget law the Government has chosen not to refinance for the second consecutive year the Fund for the contribution to the rent provided for by the law 431/98, and the innocent arrears fund referred to in law 124/2014, leaving the municipalities alone to face this drama, without even the albeit insufficient social safety net of contributions. Yet the data speaks clearly in its naked cruelty: in 2022 alone, in the Abruzzo Region the number of sentences issued was 1,408 (+66.43% compared to 2021); the execution requests were 1363 (+151.94% compared to 2021) and the evictions carried out were 813 (+195.64% compared to 2021) with worrying peaks precisely in the City of Pescara with 1033 orders issued with a variation of more than 99.04%, requests for executions equal to 772 with an increase of more than 196.92% and with no. 536 evictions carried out with a variation of more than 199.44%. Clearly, these are data that take us back to the pre-covid years. Behind these numbers there are stories of impoverished families, elderly people, families with disabled people and minors. In the majority of cases, local administrations, despite the mayors having the legal obligation to protect human rights, in particular the right to health threatened by the loss of housing, do not have the ability to provide answers, offering alternative accommodation at cost sustainable, despite the fact that there are often vacant ERP accommodations in their territories, and often they are not even able to intercept this silent exodus”.
“The plague of housing insecurity, rather than reducing, has continued to spread in recent years marked by economic crises, health emergencies and wars which have had heavy social repercussions. The internal relationship between economic crises, drops in wages or precarious jobs and evictions is clearly demonstrated by the sentences motivated by blameless arrears, a social tsunami that is undermining social cohesion even in our city. In 2023, Istat announced that there were 983,000 families in absolute poverty and in rent (around one hundred thousand more than in 2021). These are enormous numbers which, however, represent only the tip of the iceberg of structural housing suffering. Through our listening desks, we note that, for every eviction carried out, unfortunately, there are even more “borderline” families, with the real risk of falling into the deadly web of the enforcement procedure. Today, even more so after the elimination of rent contribution funds and after the exclusion of hundreds of thousands of families from the citizen’s income and the attached rent contribution, the risk of a further worsening of housing insecurity is evident. Cities they are experiencing an unprecedented purge of their tenants.”
“Added to this are the effects on rentals of the lack of regulation of short-term rentals; which takes away homes from resident citizens and non-resident students, over 800,000 in Italy, who have just over 40,000 beds available in university residences, unable to find accommodation in large and small tourist cities or university campuses. We remind you that the UN Committee on Human Rights, on several occasions, at the request of the Tenants Union and following specific appeals, has requested, with a formal act, to comply with the provisions of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (art. 11), ratified with law 881 of 1977, implementing precautionary measures for the suspension of evictions and the assignment of “suitable alternative housing”, which are not, he specifies, the precarious and divisive rooms of families sometimes proposed by the Municipalities. These are precise obligations, as established by the final resolution of the UN Committee E/C12/75/D226/20201 of 02/28/2024, which asks Italy not only to assign a council house to the recurrent evicted person, but also the economic compensation caused by human rights violations and the reimbursement of legal expenses incurred. On the basis of the considerations expressed above, we ask you that, in order to guarantee compliance with the aforementioned legislation and the dignity of people, you proceed with the suspension of the executions of rental evictions, foreclosures and evictions of any nature, without prejudice to those for which passage from home to home is guaranteed for families who meet the requirements for the assignment of a public residential house at social rent”.
“We also ask you to take action, within your jurisdiction, towards the Government to ask: – Immediately refinance the social rent fund for 2024 and for innocent arrears in a reasonable manner to recover what has not already been financed in 2023 (with immediate procedures and simplified transfer of resources to municipalities), also using what is recovered from tax evasion regarding rental payments as for AIRBNB. Provide financing for the two funds with a three-year projection starting from the next financial law to allow adequate planning of the municipalities – Extraordinary financing for the municipalities in order to acquire the housing of public and private bodies in order to be able to quickly create a housing stock in order to be able to start real paths for the transition from home to home for families under eviction – Recover, starting from 2024, the tens of thousands of ERP homes, currently unusable, to make them immediately available for assignment, avoiding any form of subtraction of this heritage from public residential construction”.
” Arrange for the opening of tables in each Prefecture for the social management of executions, with local authorities, the IACP however denominated, the social partners, public bodies and various useful institutions, in order to identify the social accompaniment paths for the transition from home to home – In order to initiate a structural response, finance a plan to increase public residential housing at social rent, starting from the next financial law, with a suitable and multi-year investment (equal to at least 1 % of GDP), through the recovery and reuse of existing real estate and the conversion of buildings for other public purposes.”
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