Housing and Homelessness in Contemporary Rome - Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City - page 53

cade. The first phase was principally led by the partito Comunista italiano (ital-
ian Communist party), whereas the second saw the emergence of the extrapar-
liamentary left organizations, especially in the 1970s. since the end of the 1980s,
radical left organizations have surfaced that are not directly linked to any party
and have adopted new forms of protest.
after the second world war, the pCi organized the movement of Consulte
popolari per la Casa (popular associations for Consultation on housing) to ob-
tain services such as electricity, sewage, transport, and schools for thousands of
people (tozzetti 1989). several neighborhoods were built in the middle of no-
where, 10 km away from the city center, in order to increase the value of the land
between them and the city.4 The main objective of the Consulte popolari (Groups
for popular Consultation) and Comitati per la casa (housing Committees) was
the recovery of the borgate and the integration of all neglected peripheral neigh-
borhoods. The pCi had a twofold attitude, demanding that planning and house
building be carried out legally and, at the same time, that the illegal houses built
during the weekends by poor southern immigrants be legalized (tozzetti 1989).
in 1961, after a long battle, the fascist law No. 1092/1939 was revoked. This law
had aimed to curb migration to urban centers and denied thousands of italian
migrants, illegally resident in Rome and elsewhere, the possibility of being listed
in the population registers. This meant that they could not vote or receive health
and welfare assistance (berlinguer and Della seta 1976). between 1963 and 1966,
unassigned public housing was squatted in trullo, san basilio, and tufello, rep-
resenting the end of a long cycle of protest (tozzetti 1989).
The second phase of the struggle for housing was very intense and produced
some of europe's greatest squatting campaigns ever. for two years until 1971,
extensive squatting of empty houses took place, reaching its peak on october 29.
for two days, 3,300 apartments were occupied, mobilizing thirteen thousand to
fourteen thousand families. another big wave of squatting occurred in 1974 when
hundreds of families camped out in front of city hall for 68 days demanding a
house (Comitati autonomi operai di Roma 1976). The struggles of working-class
people from the borgate converged with broader national protest movements that
started in 1968 and lasted throughout the 1970s. while the national association
of public housing tenants (unione Nazionale inquilini assegnatari) only pro-
moted squatting of public housing as a means to negotiate with the institutions,
extraparliamentary organizations (for example, autonomia operaia—autono-
mist workers' Group) targeted also private housing, demanding a rent equal to
10 percent of one's salary. a famous slogan graffitied around the city in the 1970s
was “ La casa si occupa, l'occupazione si difende ” (“occupy houses, defend occupa-
tion”). These intense struggles cannot be isolated from the climate of social and
police violence which prevailed in italy at the time. The most dramatic episode
occurred in the san basilio suburb of Rome in september 1974, when a radi-