During the last month, Bologna has been rocked by a wave of occupations of housing. These
occupations should be understood in the context of national week of action culminating in
the national demonstration on 19 October in Rome. ---- these occupations, conducted in a
number of areas of Bologna, involve a variety of popular grassroots movements. --- During
the last month, Bologna has been rocked by a wave of occupations of housing. These
occupations should be understood in the context of national week of action culminating in
the national demonstration in Rome on 19 October (see this thread: 18/19 octobre
mobilizations against austerity and social reconstruction.). ---- Occupants justify their
actions as responses to what they describe as an emergency housing.
The ASIA-USB (union base at the forefront of the movement for housing) quotes the
following figures on Bologna from 2012: about 1000 families received a deportation order
and require nearly 10,000 social housing , by contrast, 7,000 private apartments and 225
social housing units remain vacant public park in this city of 380,000 inhabitants (in the
middle of an urban area of ??nearly one million people).
The lack of affordable housing in Bologna has become a key issue for almost two decades.
Although activists denounced the housing situation for some time, the issue became public
in local newspapers mainstream in 2009 after Nomisma (an economic consulting firm working
across the country but based in Bologna) has published a detailed report on housing in
Italy. The report showed that between 1991 and 2009, there was an increase of nearly 100%
in house prices in Bologna and a 75% increase in rents, against an average increase in
revenue of only 18%.
Local housing policies have made the situation worse instead of better, even at the
margin. Valerio Monteventi activist and former adviser of Bologna, noted in a detailed
report published in 2010, local authorities were unable to meet the needs of the most
vulnerable urban populations - migrants, students and low-income households. Local housing
policies have not sought to promote the construction of student residences and
multi-family housing cheap and have not been able to make it fully habitable existing
apartments in the grounds of public housing.
There are occupations in a number of areas of Bologna, which involve a variety of popular
grassroots movements.
In the city center, the ASIA-USB, with a dozen families already evicted from their homes,
held a large housing project abandoned.
Also in the center, the "Labas Occupato" (a student group currently based in a former
barracks occupied) has launched a project called "crowdhousing" - operation renovation
self-organized and cooperative part of the barracks for make it habitable, especially for
students. [1]
Another action in response mainly to the massive housing needs of the large student
population of Bologna is the "Studentato Occupato Taksim" (Student Residence busy Taksim).
The Studentato was opened by Collettivo Universitario Autonomo (AUC), a joint
inter-varsity student activist in the former convent boarding school located on the
outskirts of Bologna, which had been empty for more than three years. They enter this
occupation into a struggle against the rising cost studies, university fees, prices higher
and higher student canteens, the only possible student access and luxury homes to meet
their needs for spaces of socialization self-organized.
A second action in the periphery was the occupation of a private in the neighborhood
Bolognina residential building. Bolognina ("Little Bologna") is a traditional and historic
working class neighborhood, currently at the center of several major projects
"regeneration" and massive urban renewal (with many tertiary) which will lead to
large-scale gentrification and incorporation This vast area, which adjoins the historic
center of the city north of the railway station and railway lines, in a new city, fully
scaled and much larger, of the metropolis.
Public statements by their occupants explicitly designated shares as a form of struggle
against this wider process: "The building has been occupied for solving the housing needs
of many of us who are homeless or tired of paying exorbitant rents in Bologna, but also to
a first concrete step in the fight against the redefinition of Bolognina. Indeed, this
area ons for a number of years, the appetites of profiteers and speculators who, under the
direction of the municipal administration, aimed at transforming a popular area in the new
business center of the city just . ? without evictions, mega-infrastructure projects,
shopping centers and police raids. "
Although relatively tolerant most new occupations, the council expelled than Bolognina.
The eviction was carried out without any alternative accommodation for the occupants.
few days later, the occupants evicted began a second action in another empty apartment
building, still in Bolognina. The occupants were again expelled and several activists
involved - who were able to delay the eviction process more than 20 hours climbing on the
roof of the building - received a deportation order Bologna [2]. Despite this, the
activists involved in this action, in their last public statement, expressed their
satisfaction. Occupations, they write, are a "clear message to the authorities of Bologna"
, they "continue and evictions will become rougher. We'll see who will tire first " .
The 19/11/2013
(After Struggles in Italy, Informa-azione.info ...)
XYZ OCLibertaire
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Notes
[1] They define it as "a collective practice, disseminate and cooperative reappropriation
and requalification of urban areas for residential purposes. A practice that avoids and
fights against speculation and real estate rents, building (literally) to the bottom right
to housing " .
[2] The Italian legislation on enforcement has a formidable old tool, banishment, the
"foglio via di" , the eviction notice which prevents an accurate persons traveling in an
area where they are not native and that for periods of several years. Commonly used for
the maintenance of order and event management, it has become a normal way to ward off
intruders, activists and active and integral parts of the conflict, as the Val Susa or
other regions with social conflicts. Thus, three union activists active in the conflict
based logistics sector are prohibited from living for three years in the province of
Piacenza and activists fighting on the accommodation of the city of Florence are forbidden
to go to Rome, etc.)
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