Hosting a refugee earns landlords €35 a day from the state, but asylum seekers report being left without gas, water and food
The water and gas had been shut off for days when Lessena M and his flatmates, a group of asylum seekers from Ivory Coast who have been living in Naples for more than a year, decided to stage a protest.
They began throwing rubbish bins and an old orange sofa over the balcony of their flat while neighbours gathered in the street to watch. Then the police arrived, seemingly dismayed that the owner of the flat had not yet turned the water back on. Without working plumbing, the stench in the property had become intolerable. Lessena, 34, said even the boy who brought them their food every day in a plastic pouch – always pasta – had stopped coming.
“We were totally abandoned. At that point, we were totally alone,” he said. Soft-spoken Lessena, who survived an acid attack in Ivory Coast that scarred his left shoulder and neck, said he had been to the police several times to file formal complaints, because the owners of his building, who are being paid by the Italian state to house asylum seekers, were not reachable.
Within days of the protest, which was captured last month in a film for the Guardian by Italian journalists, the asylum seekers were moved.
Lessena is one of an estimated 99,000 migrants being hosted in Italy this year at a cost of about €1.16bn, double what it cost last year. The job of taking care of them has largely been outsourced to charities, individuals, companies and cooperatives across Italy. While many are housed in huge reception centres, such as Europe’s largest in Mineo, Sicily, others are sent to smaller properties, where landlords, hotel managers and restaurant proprietors have turned their available space into housing. It is a lucrative business: owners of shelters for asylum seekers are paid €35 a day for every adult they house. A person running a shelter receives €1.28m if they house 100 people for a year.
On paper, asylum seekers are legally entitled to certain benefits to help them stay safe and healthy and even assimilate into Italian society: food and medical attention, psychological support and €2.50 per day. Rightwing politicians, led by the Northern League’s Matteo Salvini, habitually portray asylum seekers as living cushy lives on the dole.
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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/26/italy-migrant-shelters-refugees-naples-landlords