Symbols are important, they explain ideals, principles and purposes better than many reasonings. The skeleton of the Edera building with the illegal floors demolished in Cosenza was a symbol of this.
Anyone who entered and still enters Cosenza from the motorway junction and looks to the left learns that this is (or rather was) a city where the rules were respected by everyone.
And those who did not respect them, as in the case in question, paid the consequences also through the demolition of what was built illegally.
We learn from the press that now this symbol of respect for the rules and the fact that the rules apply to everyone will no longer be there. Not because it will be demolished, but because the building will be rebuilt, it is not known whether even the illegal part will be rebuilt. And in addition, an indemnity will also be paid to the construction company.
The city council on 10/06/2024 approved, as reported in the press release from the Administration, “an important agreement that will allow us to complete and redevelop a building that has been disfiguring our city for 20 years now”. The building in question is the “Edera” building. From that skeleton, again according to the council, new public housing units will be created. The objective is to guarantee a certain number of homes for the people most in need, in economic difficulty, and who do not own their own home and cannot afford to pay a market rent.
The construction of the apartments should, as supported by the municipal administration, address the drama of the housing emergency in the city.
No one denies that in the city there is a need and urgency for those who do not have the economic resources to have a housing solution. It seems less convincing to us to argue that there is a dramatic “housing emergency” in Cosenza given that in just a few decades the city has gone from more than 100,000 inhabitants to less than 60,000, where thousands of apartments are now vacant. How excessive the exultation that with the creation of an artefact we can address and solve the housing problem for those who, and there are many of them, cannot afford to pay the rent for an apartment seems excessive to us.
Perhaps on such an important and controversial issue it would have been necessary to convene a meeting of the PD circle (which has not met in the city since January 4th), with city councilors and administrators and together establish the line and objectives to be pursued. It must be said that Aterp, the Municipality and the Region intervened quickly on this occasion, and found solutions and resources to be able to proceed quickly and complete the building.
We would certainly have been pleased to see the speed with which the solution for Palazzo Edera was approached by the Municipality and Region also in the solution of an equally and perhaps more important work such as the provincial hospital which, for years now, despite the resources available, cannot find a solution regarding its location with the same urgency. Precisely because of the events that have characterized the history of this building (conceived to host public residential buildings and to meet the housing needs of disadvantaged people, never completed due to abuses during the construction phase with consequent demolitions due to construction and administrative irregularities and judicial matters with disputes and appeals, and finally with the sentence of the Council of State, which declared its ownership to be in the hands of the Municipality itself) the city should be offered the maximum amount of administrative transparency, in order to avoid possible misunderstandings, misunderstandings and chatter.
In fact, the story of Palazzo Edera is characterized by administrative choices and events, which are also reported in the municipal resolution itself, and which appear somewhat incomprehensible and contradictory, such as that of the purchase made in 2008 by the ASP of Cosenza of the property in question.
“In November 2008 the Edera company (had) responded positively to a request for an expression of interest from the ASP of Cosenza for the purchase of a property”, that is, the ASP of Cosenza in 2008 was willing to purchase, almost as if it were the only property on the market in the city, a building under construction with a different intended use than the request of the health company and which was affected by a legal dispute between a public administration and a private individual (sic!).
Instead, to stick to the present, the question that comes spontaneously from reading the same resolution is why the Municipality of Cosenza, without any judicial ruling in this regard, has today taken a decision which, perhaps formally in the future, will ensure the availability of some high-quality accommodation subsidized or popular housing, but already today recognizes the enrichment of the institution and the social function of the works carried out by the company that carried out the serious building abuse, effectively removing the obstacles posed by the art. 194 TUEL to the recognition of the off-balance sheet debt by the municipal bankruptcy liquidation body. In practice, in the futuristic perspective of the agreement with ATERP, the City Council has recognized the legitimacy of an off-balance sheet debt of which it does not even know the amount and which will, let it be clear to everyone, be paid by the citizens of Cosenza in the next years.
We therefore ask ourselves why the Municipality should pay in advance compensation to the defaulting and already condemned company by the Council of State that has not been judicially recognised, when the property is not yet available to the needy assignees. That is, what is the rationale for compensation for an asset already acquired by the Municipality from a private individual, who no longer has title to the asset and who has disfigured the image of the city for over twenty years, while the social benefits are still to come.
Furthermore, given the positive relationship established in the specific case with the Region and Occhiuto, why then is the same relationship not used to create other works that interest the city such as, for example, the Alarico Museum which has been languishing for years, in contempt of the decorum of the city, in pitiful conditions?
On these questions we have asked, we hope that the Administration and the competent Councilor will find a way and time to clarify our legitimate doubts to the city.
The members of the PD
Sergio De Simone, Giacomo Mancini, Alessandro Grandinetti, Saverio Carlo Greco
