Napoli. 'Committees for the right to housing' and people from the neighborhood have been occupying since the early hours of the morning a small apartment in the historic center of Naples whose tenants, an elderly lady who is a well-known innkeeper in the historic center and her daughter's family, had an eviction order pending. The initiative is part of the campaign 'Magnammece 'O Pesone' (let's use the rent money for food, ed.) whose activists have long been denouncing "the effects of 'touristification' that pushes owners to kick out old tenants to transform the premises into more profitable reception facilities". "Mrs. Titina - the promoters of the protest explain in a statement - is an elderly lady but also a very well-known figure in the historic center of Naples, once the owner of a very small restaurant in via S. Chiara, today she is in serious financial difficulty and together with her daughter's family is being evicted from the home in which she historically lives near vico Carrozzieri. In this case too we are faced with a multi-owner who, faced with the woman's financial difficulties, immediately obtained eviction and then refused any conciliation (for example through the innocent default fund) probably because, rather than recovering the rent, his interest is to use yet another apartment in the old city center as a vacation home (about five thousand apartments have become vacation homes in the last four years alone in a totally deregulated process). One of the pathological effects of touristification which, without counterbalances and policies for housing, risks deserting the city's old neighborhoods of their most popular component. A race against time for Mrs. Titina to find an economically accessible solution and not be expelled after decades from a neighborhood that is increasingly inhospitable to its own inhabitants due to the uncontrolled increase in rents and the absence of public intervention to support the classes in housing emergency.
The solidarity of the neighborhood and of the organizations fighting for the right to housing, however, gave life to a demonstration with many dozens of people that for the second time after July allowed Titina to obtain mediation and a new postponement until the end of January despite the fact that the presence of the police force had been granted for the forced execution of the eviction”.
Article published on November 26, 2018 - 14:01
