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Pricier Rome to Vote on Evicting Elderly
The Associated Press
Italy
January
30, 2006
After living for more than 60 years in the same apartment on Campo dei Fiori -- one of Rome's most famous piazzas -- Marcello Alunni is in no mood to move. Now 70, he arrived long before the square became a tourist attraction lined with bars and restaurants.
Alunni is one of a group of survivors in the once-humble neighborhoods of Rome's historic center who have been threatened with eviction as landlords seek to catch up with soaring property prices by redoing apartments and hiking the rents.
Evictions have long been a sensitive issue in Rome, and with national and municipal elections looming, politicians have taken action. A decree approved by Premier Silvio Berlusconi's government last week and backed by two center-right candidates for Rome mayor blocks the ousting of vulnerable city tenants for six months.
That gives Alunni, who had been told to leave by Feb. 2, a reprieve -- a victory for him and other elderly Romans -- some 15 in total -- who have staged regular demonstrations, saying they risk being forced onto the street if evicted from their city center apartments.
Other groups priced out of the property market have launched more striking protests. Earlier this month a right wing group dangled puppets resembling hanged men from bridges, lampposts and buildings across Rome, saying they represented ''a multitude of Italians who can no longer bear usury rents and bank home loans that are true death sentences.''
In December, dozens of people -- mainly women and children from immigrant families -- occupied the Roman basilica of St. John Lateran for several hours to protest evictions and call for more housing rights.
Property prices have been climbing all over Italy, but have risen quickest in Rome, where rents increased by 139 percent between 1998 and 2004, according to Italian research group CRESME. Renting a two-bedroom apartment in the historic center now costs at least $1,825 a month.
While this is part of a global property bubble, it comes at a time when the Italian economy has stagnated, meaning many young people, families, and an expanding immigrant community have found it hard to make ends meet. Rome has no rent control, though City Hall has offered $604,000 tax breaks to landlords who stick to a rental level determined as reasonable by the municipality for any given part of the city.
Alunni, who used to work in a gas station on the embankment of the river Tiber, says he pays $430 a month to live in the 431 square feet apartment, leaving him little from his $615 monthly pension.
When his family began renting the apartment in 1942, he said, the area round Campo dei Fiori was a tough neighborhood and the houses were cheap. ''Then everything changed. New people came and the old Romans died or left.''
With its attractive Renaissance buildings set around a cobblestone square, Campo dei Fiori has become a popular place for locals and tourists to pass the day. It is beloved for its daily farmers' market, set around an imposing statue of Giordano Bruno that marks the spot where the Italian philosopher was burned alive in 1600.
Speaking inside the apartment, cluttered but boasting a spacious room with a wood-beamed ceiling that looks out onto the piazza, Alunni said the people who moved into the area were ''all bourgeoisie, and had nothing to do with the people who had lived here since they were born.''
The decree passed last week is limited to elderly, young, or disabled tenants in urban areas who don't have anywhere else to live and cannot afford higher rents. The burden is on the tenants to prove they fall into these categories.
Vasco Pirri, a spokesman for Rome city hall, said the decree offers ''a mouthful of oxygen,'' and would apply to 1,100 out of around 2,000 Romans threatened with eviction.
He complained, however, that Rome was still waiting for $44 million promised by the central government that could be used to provide housing for those who are eventually evicted.
The decree also gives tax breaks to landlords who suspend eviction procedures.
The measure also has its opponents, with property owners' association Confedilizia, complaining that it will discourage people from investing in housing when they do not know whether they can evict tenants and use the property as they want.
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