Italy, two initiatives for the World Zero Evictions Days
There are two initiatives that will mark in this October 2011 the activity of the Tenants’ Union (Unione Inquilini) on the occasion of the World Days of the campaign “Zero Evictions” taking place all over the world. It is the launching of the National campaign against black rental fees, for fair rent and against evictions as well as the performance demonstration against the camorra (Naples, 22nd October 2011).
National campaign in favour of rents and against evictions: the constitution of joint committees
Taking advantage of a recently approved regulation that fights rental property tax evasion, the Tenants’ Union prepared a procedure that allows the tenant who has no regular lease (either because it is not registered or entered into or for any other reason) to report it to the financial offices and to register autonomously the contract. After this act, the rental fee will be fixed at three times the cadastral rent while the contract will have the duration of 4 years plus 4 beginning from the date of registration. The lease becomes regular and the rent is reduced up till by 80% compared to the open market.
There are already hundreds of cases successfully solved and a recent judgement expanded the scope of this claim to arrearage, establishing that eviction for non-payment of rent for a non-registered lease cannot be confirmed as the contract itself is not valid. In fact, the validity of the lease starts at the moment the renter declares it to the financial office, nullifying the illegality.
Therefore, the emerging from illegality through the self-denunciation of the tenant is an action that consolidates leases and blocks evictions in progress.
The launching of a campaign against black rents is announced in Rome in October which unites the Tenants’ Union, Action, ARCI and numerous associations of students and social movements included with the establishment of joint committees in many cities.
Naples, performance demonstration against the camorra
The initiative, promoted by the branch of the Tenants’ Union in Campania take place in Secondigliano, at the centre of districts right where the power of organized crime is considerable. Dozens of artists and dozens of National and local associations, frontier priests, politicians, among whom the new major of the city, people directly committedt in to the fight against the mafias, declared their availability to participate in the demonstration that focuses on the flow and use of money used to subjugate the population. The camorra is a criminal middle class that uses money as a system of domination and it is therefore near and contiguous to the power system.
Hence, the fight against the camorra is first of all a social fight, a fight for work, housing, dignity and the future.
The power of the demonstration and of the initiative of the Tenants’ Union of Naples lies in this: the camorra is to be combated first of all at the social level offering the population a chance for redemption to the people for whom the current system of power does not give hope for the future.
The heavy denounciation is that the camorra in that reality carries out evictions, penetrates heavily in the administration of public housing and threatens opponents.
The fight against eviction and for the housing right is part of a broader struggle for the release from two powers that suppress this part of the city, often in alliance with one another: the official economic and political power and the power of the camorrist middle-class.
In Naples, the branches of the Tenants’ Union are points of sociality, realization and self-organisation located in the most difficult areas in which even branches of political parties have disappeared.
The concert performance promoted by the Tenants’ Union of Naples take place in Secondigliano on Saturday, 22nd October 2011 at 8.30 pm.