A motion to ensure that Ilaria Salis, newly elected to the European Parliament with Avs with over 176 thousand preferences, pays her alleged debt with Aler: this is what the provision of the regional councilor of Fratelli d’Italia Marcello Ventura and signed by the entire group asks for. The motion will be put to the vote on Wednesday 26 June, after having implemented some changes from the council. Formally, the motion speaks of generic «seizure of compensation for arrears in the payment of rent for council houses» and Salis is never mentioned: only once is reference made to «the MEP» whose «figure is a role of high responsibility and an example for the citizens» who «should fulfill economic and legal obligations in an irreproachable manner».
Even among the “considerations” Salis is never mentioned but the situation described would be the one she is accused of the illegal occupation of a house in via Borsi in Milan in 2008: «It has been established that XX has not regularly paid the rent for the assignment of the council house he owns. Despite the reminders sent by the institution, the accumulated debt has not been paid and no valid justifications have been provided for the arrears. The amount would amount to 90 thousand euros». But the figure has always been contested by the MEP herself: «Aler is based only on the fact that in 2008 I was found inside it. Although in the following 16 years no checks were ever carried out to verify my permanence, nor was any civil or criminal proceedings initiated against me, Aler accounts for the credit”, she had written on Instagram.
The motion asks the president Attilio Fontana to «urge Aler to immediately start the legal procedures for debt recovery, including the use of salary garnishment and requires that a request be forwarded to the judge to obtain salary garnishment, until the debt is satisfied.” Obviously, it will be up to the judge to determine whether the MEP’s salary should be seized.
In Milan there are over 8,500 vacant public housing units. Of these, 4,504 (of which a few hundred in the province) are owned by Aler, the Lombard residential construction company that is part of the Region, which, between the city and the hinterland, has 34,370 real estate units. Within the confines of the metropolis, then, there are aAnother 4 thousand homes are owned by Mm, the Municipality’s subsidiary which since 2014 has taken over management of the 28,015 apartments of the Palazzo Marino real estate assets. But given these numbers, there is a theme of occupations: for Aler, by 2023 there were 2,859 consolidated ones (3,466 in 2017). From the 844 interventions carried out in 2023, Aler has recovered 87% of occupied houses (732 apartments). For Mm, the numbers are smaller: if in 2014 there were 1,740 occupied houses, four years later they were 1,024, finally halving in June 2024 (511).
Numbers which, for the leader of the Democratic Party at Pirellone Pierfrancesco Majorino, are an “even bigger scandal in Lombardy where the Region has 19 thousand empty houses”. In recent days Salis had vindicated his past by recalling that “no occupant wants to be one” but that, in a city like Milan “where there are around 12 thousand vacant homes and over 10 thousand people waiting”, “the accusation of stealing the place to a person on the waiting list simply doesn’t hold up: whoever enters an uninhabited house takes without taking away from anyone except degradation, racketeering or property developers». Also because “after an eviction there is never a reassignment: the houses are closed, walled up and sheet metal”.
