BOLZANO. “Do you want to live in Bolzano? Choose between paying rent and starving, or shopping and living under bridges”, here is one of the dozens of social outbursts published by young workers desperately looking for accommodation. Months spent looking at online ads, fewer and fewer, at increasingly less accessible prices. Calls, offers, owners who do not respond, or who ask for references that are too specific, including the requirement of a permanent employment contract. From “no children”, “no animals”, we also get to “no foreigners”, or “no southerners”. Forcing hundreds of young people – our workforce – to leave Alto Adige, convinced that there is no place for them in this rich region. Then there are those who were born in Bolzano, and despite the support of their parents, struggle to make ends meet, with rents ranging from a minimum of 500 euros for a room to 800/1,000 euros for the very few studios and two-room apartments in the city. There are many reports that reach the editorial staff of our newspaper on the topic of housing. Below, anonymously, we report some testimonies of young workers.
Discriminations
“I ran away from Alto Adige partly because of discrimination, after having worked as a surveyor for five years”, the story of a young worker of Apulian origins, “I was repeatedly denied rent, even though I had a work contract of more than five years, just because they did not have “the security of social integration” (in Lana). Or I saw prices for a room inflated on purpose because I was a worker (520 euros a month for a room in a four-room apartment, kitchen and only one bathroom)”. Another voice. “For a studio apartment, which is also unobtainable, with sky-high rents, the first question they ask you is whether you are from the south”, the outburst of a young Sicilian, in Bolzano for work reasons.
A thirty-year-old Tunisian, who came to Italy to help his family, also recounts his difficult experience. As a former guest of a cold emergency dormitory, he lived in his car for months, until he found a roof over his head. But at what cost? “Four hundred euros for a room shared with four other people,” he says, showing a photo of the crowded beds.
«References only»
Another “horror” story comes from a young couple from Bolzano, who have been looking for an apartment to rent for months. Both self-employed, their search is hampered by the lack of “stable” work contracts. “Even though we have parents with permanent work contracts, who can support us if necessary, we have been rejected several times due to our work situation,” they say. “This is in addition to the exorbitant prices and the limited supply – currently there are very few apartments for rent in absolute terms, while houses for sale are depopulating. Then, once you have miraculously found an apartment, you contact the owners and they don’t respond. In short, we haven’t been able to figure it out for months.”
A PhD student at the University of Bolzano also recounts similar experiences: «Luckily I found a house, but the past few months have been crazy. I have a three-year fixed-term employment contract and this was already a huge problem for most of the tenants. One landlord wanted my salary to be at least four times the rent (so about 3,500 euros a month to be able to rent a house for just over 800 euros a month…). Another wanted to do weekly checks on the apartment without warning. Yet another wanted to speak to my boss on the phone… Most of the time I found myself forced to say in very general terms that I worked for the university or that I was a researcher, because the moment I said I was doing a PhD (which is essentially the same thing) suddenly the house was no longer available».
On the contrary, Nicole, a young worker, was refused a room to rent precisely because of her permanent employment contract. “I found a room for 500 euros a month in a shared apartment,” she says, “They didn’t accept me because the accommodation would only be free for a year (that was fine with me for the moment), and they would only accept students who intended to stay there for a short time. I was speechless.”
«Chumiliating conditions»
The last testimony comes from a girl from Trentino who, tired of commuting for work (about an hour and twenty minutes each way), looked for a rental accommodation, finding herself faced with terrible experiences. “In three years I changed house five times,” she says, “The second to last was an old and poorly maintained house. With a good fixed salary I found myself not only having to share the house with students, but living in a run-down apartment, full of mold and with minimum living standards only because I couldn’t find other solutions.” An experience that she describes as “humiliating,” especially at the idea that sometimes even working with a good salary isn’t enough to live decently.
2024-09-15 17:13:35