End of life, Bonaccini, “we will defend our actions”

Block the auction sales throughout Emilia-Romagna of hundreds of public residential properties currently vacant and open a working table to arrive at a regional law proposal for their self-recovery: Cobas and Plat launch a new initiative to counter the increasingly pressing phenomenon of the housing emergency, not only in the capital. Blocking of sales and self-recovery of public housing stock. This is the proposal signed by Cobas and Plat, a social intervention platform in Bologna, as an alternative to the auction for the sale of vacant Erp properties (13 on sale in the capital since the end of March, of which 4 in the building in the Pilastro area, headquarters of the meeting with the press) in the face of a housing emergency that is increasingly pressing even under the Towers. Luca Simoni, spokesperson for Plat, explains: “Today we are in via Grazia Deledda because a tender for the sale of Erp houses has been opened, after a resolution of the city council in 2022 had closed the possibility that public assets could be sold. But here there is only a small part of the properties that the Region puts up for sale every year – he continues -. However, a small part of which we think is important to block and to be allocated to public housing and to the six thousand families who are waiting for public housing in Bologna alone. We have a very clear idea, that is, a regional law proposal that can lead to the assignment of the hundreds and hundreds of public properties currently vacant in our region. It is a law on self-recovery that we think could be a solution to the housing emergency that grips our cities, but which could give respite to those who are currently waiting for public housing or are experiencing the problem of eviction first-hand and of housing hardship”. Over 1500 evictions are expected in 2024 alone, between blameless arrears and the end of the lease without the possibility of finding new accommodation, especially if they are migrants, continue the activists, the same ones who in Bologna have already become protagonists of similar experiences, with important results. The latest is the one in via Carracci 63, where for a few months, another 24 apartments included in a disposal plan have been recovered and today welcome 110 people. “In this case and in others we have demonstrated, with our own strength, that it is possible” adds the Plat exponent. The invitation to the working table leading to the drafting of the text of the regional law is open to institutions and all entities involved in this field on a daily basis. “Laws like this already exist in other regions, such as Tuscany and Lazio – concludes Simoni -. We think that a Region like Emilia-Romagna, which prides itself on being one of the most advanced on a social level and so on, should work as soon as possible to also find the possibility of having a regional law that allows for self-recovery , and no longer leave our public heritage vacant or up for sale.”