The mayor of Casal di Principe writes to the Government again: "move"

A few months before the end of his second and final term, the mayor of Casal di PrincipeRenato Natale has made his voice heard again with a letter sent to Prime Minister Meloni and other ministers on the issue of illegal building.

Something that has never been resolved by any government and that only in the town of Caserta concerns 1300 homes recognized as abusive by a definitive judicial sentence and recipients of demolition orders, where approximately 22 thousand people live.

This is known as "illegal construction of necessity," because it almost exclusively concerns first homes built over 20 years ago with great sacrifice in an area where, until the first decade of the 2000s, the Camorra ruled. There were no zoning plans, so people built wherever they could. Moreover, this is a flat area where there are no particular hydrogeological, landscape, or historical-cultural constraints prohibiting the construction of structures.

Natale has written to governments several times, interacted with the Region, which seemed sympathetic to Casale's dire situation, and collaborated in presenting legislative proposals to allow the municipal acquisition of these homes, which would then be rented to the same tenants, almost always poor people with no other homes to live in. This is a way to address a situation that doesn't harm the local area and avoid adding to the socio-housing problem and the problem of maintaining municipal coffers, which lack the significant resources for demolition.

Today, Natale is reviving the proposed amendment to the urban planning law, presented near the end of the Draghi government, with Mara Carfagna as Minister for the South. This amendment specifically allowed municipalities to acquire illegal homes and demolish them unless the City Council declared the existence of overriding public interests and provided that the project did not conflict with significant urban planning, environmental, or hydrogeological concerns.

"What we're proposing," Natale explains, "is not a legal amnesty; to prevent speculation, the homes acquired as public property will be unavailable, meaning the Authority will never be able to sell them. But despite numerous promises of attention, to date no results have been achieved.

"This is the same provision in force for confiscated properties," Natale adds, "which cannot be sold, to prevent the properties from reverting to the perpetrator. But today we remain in a situation where, alongside the hypocrisy of claiming that the abuses should be demolished, knowing full well that in the majority of cases this isn't possible, there persist financial, social, and environmental problems for municipalities where the phenomenon is particularly severe."

Among the public interests that may prevent the demolition of an illegal house are "the property's designation as social housing and its use by families residing in the municipality who have no home in the country."

The council resolution would serve as a building permit for the property. Natale then reminds the Government that "over the last ten years, since I've been mayor, giving full availability and cooperation to the prosecutors, we've demolished five homes (the last a few months ago), taking out loans from Cassa Depositi e Prestiti for approximately €5 million, to be repaid within five years.

By 2024, we're already expected to pay the first installments of these loans, putting a strain on our already struggling coffers. I also note that the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti demolition fund is only €50 million, insufficient for the needs of our city alone, let alone all of Italy.

But there's more: this fund was established once and for all, so it's not replenished every year, and as far as we know, it's been reduced to around one million euros. Of course, the law says we should recover the money from the owners, but I don't think it takes much to understand that this will never happen, except for very small sums."

"Recently," Natale concludes, "two families in dire financial straits, including four children, lived in a house that was slated for demolition. We faced enormous difficulties in securing new housing for the children, and this meant additional expenses for the organization, which was already struggling financially. A government that has left these areas abandoned for decades cannot now pretend the problem doesn't exist and bury its head in the sand."