“Salis pays the rent”. “Occupying is not a right”. These are the slogans and with very heated tones that the centre-right majority in the Regional Council of Lombardy has passed a motion which commits the president Attilio Fontana to urge Aler – the main company that manages public housing in the region – “to immediately initiate legal procedures” for the recovery of the alleged credit of 90 thousand euros towards the MEP Ilaria Saliswhich she defined as a “request without evidence”. An alleged credit that should also be collected through “resorting to the seizure of current accounts”.
Voting in the chamber
The motion, presented by the councilor of Fratelli d’Italia Marcello Ventura was approved with 45 votes in favor and 19 against. It is during the discussion that some majority councillors, including the Northern League group leader Alessandro Corbettathey displayed signs in the courtroom reading “employment is not a right”, “Salis pays the rent”.
Shortly before the vote, during the speeches of the opposition councillors Honorio Rosati (Left Green Alliance) e Nicola Di Marco (5 Star Movement), the majority councilors made such a racket as to force the president of the regional council, Federico Romani, to interrupt the session to restore order.
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“Ilaria Salis pay her debts”, motion to seize her current accounts: brawl in the Lombardy Region
The reply from the Italian Left
After the motion, the national secretary of the Italian Left, Nicholas Fratoiannicommented by stating that “we are beyond the ridiculous of an affair that sees Ilaria as the subject of a sort of politics of fury. They asked her for 90 thousand euros for an assessment carried out over ten years ago. There is nothing to prove that that figure exists. But we are faced with the attempt to transform the social struggles as a matter of public policy, this is not the case. Social struggles, starting with those on the right to live, cannot be reduced to questions of public order.”
What Ilaria Salis said
Regarding the controversy over the occupation of public housing, Salis had expressed herself a few days ago declaring that “whoever enters a uninhabited house it takes without taking away from anyone except degradation, racketeering and property developers.” “Being an occupier – she said – means inhabiting this precarious space and laboriously transforming it into a place you can call home trying to fix it with the few means available that we have”.
The Housing Councilor
“Ilaria Salis is called to Parliament to change the laws, not to instigate illegality,” he said Paul Frank, housing councilor of the Lombardy Region and member of Fratelli d’Italia, after the motion was approved. “Region is confirmed by part of the law and tenants who respect the laws, good and honest people, not those who kick down doors and don’t pay when they could pay.”
“We are not on the side of MEPs who do things apology for illegality nor even people who come to demonstrate and ask fewer evictions and fewer evictions. But fewer evictions means not working for those inside who can pay and don’t pay. There are honest people on the waiting list”.
In any case, Franco concludes, “Aler has worked with all the illegal occupants to the extent of respecting the laws and does so regardless of who they are” continued the councilor. The houses occupied in the Milan area were approximately 3,000 in 2019 and “after five years we reached 2,600. But an important fact concerns the number of illegal occupations that are avoided, around 700 per year in the Milan area alone. We we want to stay under 10% as far as vacant houses are concerned, this is our commitment.”
