Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi said
after a meeting on evictions and the city's housing crisis
Wednesday that "the positon of the city council is very clear,
we must give priority in the housing emergency to those who have
been waiting for a home for decades".
Raggi was greeted by women from the pro-squatting Movement
for the Struggle for Housing who shouted at her:
"We're all fragile, we've got nothing, the poor are all
fragile. Shame (on you)."
Last week police evicted hundreds of Eritrean refugees and
asylum seekers from a building near Termini Station they had
been squatting in for years.
The migrants clashed with police when they were cleared out
of a nearby square, where they had camped for four days.
Aid agencies and leftwing politicians said the migrants
should not have been evicted, and subsequently moved on, without
alternative lodging being provided.
The migrants reportedly refused lodgings outside Rome because
it would have meant moving their children out of schools and
being split up.
Authorities have said they will properties seized from the
mafia available to evicted squatters.
Italians on housing lists for years regularly claim migrants
are being jumped past them.
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