Gentrification: The Eviction Next Time

For some, leaving is like an amputation. For others, it means freedom. There are those who are forced out, but cannot leave. We live in an urban test-tube.....
http://aldianews.com/articles/opinion/gentrification-eviction-next-time/41226

And here is the first piece which introduces the series:
 http://aldianews.com/articles/opinion/belly-gentrification/41090

Clash of Neighborhoods

A chronicle of an increasingly bitter conflict, as lived by friends and neighbors, as my neighborhood undergoes the metamorphosis of gentrification...
http://aldianews.com/articles/opinion/inside-belly-gentrification/41090

The False War between Immigrants and the Poor

Street art in working class section of Rome.

In trying to understand the most recent outburst of racist and anti-immigrant violence in Italy, many mainstream analysts have described the clashes - in the poor peripheral neighborhoods of Rome or the public housing projects of Milan and the industrial North - as a war between domestic poor and immigrant poor. But this understanding of the violence, distorts the reality of the events and, in my view, leads to false conclusions. To depict xenophobic violence as a clash between local poor and global poor, is a convenient way for the Italian elite to let itself off the hook of institutional racism and political failure.

At first glance, of course, the idea of a war between national poor and immigrant poor seems reasonable. Poor and poorly educated immigrants do compete with local unskilled labor. They also compete, in Italy, for certain social benefits, like subsidized public housing.  Both of these competitive elements are highlighted by right and left-wing opponents of immigration. Particularly during a time of economic crisis, the argument runs, when there are no jobs and benefits to be had, these should go to citizens only. 

The argument has popular appeal. Xenophobia has done wonders for the National Front in France and is beginning to do the same for the racist Lega Nord in Italy. On the left, too, xenophobia has its converts. The anti-establishment 5 Star Movement  adopted an anti-immigration platform after vigorous internal debate. In the old Red Belt of Italy, old Communist Party voters, have begun drifting to the proto-fascist Lega, on the strength of the immigration issue. And, politically, what politician would pick to defend someone else's poor over one's own?

White Supremacist tag of Communist graffito.

But the very conception of this war between poor and poor is flawed. First, if immigration into a country has to wait for a moment in which there is no competition with locals for jobs and public resources, then it will never occur. In Italy, even during fat years, unemployment and lack of state aid are always issues for the poor. In this sense, Italy is always failing it's poor: failing to create enough jobs to bring unemployment and underemployment down to even US levels, and failing to provide sufficient benefits - public education, housing, social services like day care and health care - to lift the poor out of poverty.  There is never a time when these resources, jobs and benefits, for the poor, are not scarse. The precondition of no competition with the local poor, is tantamount to saying no immigration, ever.

Second, in this struggle of the poor against the poor argument, job competition is privileged to the exclusion of all other forms of social and economic activity.  Immigrant do compete for jobs, but they also rent rooms in poor neighborhoods, and buy food and clothing in local stores, and, if given a chance, open new businesses which create new jobs. In the United States, 17 percent of all new businesses are started by immigrants, according to the Small Business Administration. Almost all studies show a net positive effect between immigration and job creation - more growth and more jobs, eventually for all.

But for Immigrant to fully contribute to an economy, they have to be allowed to contribute to the society as well. Rules limiting what immigrants can do, and achieve, make immigration less valuable to the society. Ironically, by trying to protect the country's poor in the short-run, by making jobs and benefits harder to get for immigrants, Italy hurts their own economy, and their poor, in the long-run. 

By excluding immigrants from subsidized public housing, Italy closes it's eye to unsafe and unsanitary living conditions in illegal, but openly tolerated, camps and abandoned buildings. By making it harder to legalize one's status, Italy makes it likely to force people into informal and casual labor arrangements. The government drives people and jobs underground, in effect, reducing the amount of money that goes to the poor, and the local businesses that cater to the poor.

Public housing outside Rome, complete with swastika graffiti.

Not only has the Italian government chosen to make the life of immigrants more difficult, in a failed effort to discourage immigration - or rather partly failed, it has succeeded in keeping away educated, affluent professionals - but it has also made it difficult for their Italian born children to gain citizenship. This, of course, weakens the immigrant communities loyalty and commitment to life in Italy. It denies immigrants in Italy with one of the fundamental forces that bind immigrants in America to their new country, the future welfare of their American children. As a result, Italy is in danger of replicating a Middle Eastern rather than a New World model - not immigrants, rather guest workers, without rights or commitment or full involvement with the country.

But immigrants are not abstract entities, they have their own histories, religion and culture - and skin color - and here we come face to face with the social and cultural issues that fueled the anti-immigrant riots outside Rome, in the poor area of Tor Sapienza, Tower of Knowledge. The immigrants and political refugees huddled in fear inside the "welcome center" while a rampaging mob attacked the building with clubs and stones and fought with police, were black and Muslim, the rampaging mob was white and Christian. And this racial and cultural fact cannot be white-washed, as it were, in a discussion of poor vs. poor.  The mob was very clear about what it thought of black people. And that Italian racism deserves to be examined on its own, unqualified by discussions of poverty, in a post of its own. The next post.

The Extraordinary Humanity of Romans

One of the roads I walk almost every day intersects with the commuter rail tracks heading South of Rome. There is a pedestrian underpass, long, dark, dank, every centimeter of surface covered with graffiti. A homeless man lives here. Call him Carlo. He sets up a folding table with two chairs and a deck of cards. He lays some books out on a blanket. Throughout the day, passers-by stop to peruse the volumes he's laid out and talk about the books they are reading. Some stay to play a game of cards.

There is clearly something off about Carlo. His everyday life could not stand in greater contrast to those of his neighbors in the middle-class quarter of Rome which surrounds his grimy, well-trod den. Outside the sun shines, the sky is blue, there are plenty of derelict buildings and vacant lots where other homeless individuals have thrown up tents or huddle under blankets. But Carlo is not simply a homeless person. He is, in fact, a valued member of his neighborhood. And he is treated as a neighbor, despite his houseless-ness.

On a corner of the piazza where I go everyday to buy food or have a morning coffee, lives a man in his late sixties. He huddles on a box crate, surrounded by assorted cardboard boxes overflowing with stuff. He spends his day writing sentences in a flowing hand on the pages of a spiral notebook. Neighbors stop to talk and say hello. A lady and her grandson drop off a casserole with food for him to eat. He pulls out some sort of toy from his bundles of bundles. Another neighbor bought him a tent, long since lost, for the winter, when it rains almost everyday.  A local street artist made a graffito portrait of him, which he would sit next to, until the manager of the supermarket asked him to move because he was in the way of exiting  customers.

When people stop to talk, they greet him with a kiss on both cheeks, Italian style. They converse of local events, people they know in common. This is very different from the polite but prophylactic "good day" uttered to the beggar. Both of these homeless men are treated with a humanity which is both gentle and deep. There are no statement being made here, no pompous examples for the benefit of appearances or the good of the soul in the hereafter. No. These are Romans at their marvelous best.

A hundred meters or so from the underpass, is the river, the Tiber. It is a social no-man's land, a sort of border region where most Romans never go. Here there are also homeless people, mostly gypsies and foreign migrants, who have set up house. They collect furniture, cook food, defecate and bathe in the river. The belong to no community and are neither spoken to nor cared for. Not even the representatives of the state --the police or the park workers or the sanitary authorities-- seem to take note of their existence. And, every working day, early morning after the sun rises, bike commuters zip by on their way to work, and Roman joggers, grunting and feeling virtuous in the morning chill, pass without a glance.

It blows my mind that a place can live comfortably with both such caring, and such neglect.

Is the Sun Setting on the Italian Lifestyle?

Seen from the outside, there is something inspiringly right about how Italians live.  They close up shop to eat a home cooked lunch every day. They buy their food fresh; personally know their butchers and bakers and candlestick makers; spend a month (or two) on the beach in the summer and a week (or two) on the ski slope in winter.  And they own houses, often in stunningly beautiful locations. Italy has one of the highest homeownership rates in the world, and few kids and shrinking families mean that properties are often inherited from both sets of grandparents as well as parents. City apartments are rented out. Country homes are used, if for nothing else, for olive trees, from which they press, their own oil.

A declining industrial power, Italy is finding that
it can no longer afford to live Italian style. 

Seen from the inside, Italian families are trapped inside a compression chamber. They work long hours, the lunch break is offset by working late, often six days a week. Wages are low. Promotions are out of the question. And yet, those with a job, no matter how grinding, are grateful, because most people under 40 have given up on getting staff positions. They subsist on short term freelance contracts. No bennies. No security. No niente. To lose a job in Italy is a form of economic death.

And the home cooked meals? They have to be cooked by someone. Italy has the lowest percentage of women in workplace in old Europe (after Greece). Italian women cook and keep house (Italian men know how to make coffee), do the daily food shopping, keep house, and care for the children and elderly parents (the state neither provides daycare nor elderly care). Grown children, often unemployed, live at home into their forties.  

And the houses? Those rented are used to supplement the meager family income, and as a trust fund for unemployed offspring. Landlords live in terror of the deadbeat tenant. It can take decades to evict someone. Those houses not rented, decay. Families age and shrink. Less space is needed, maintained. Italy is house poor, falling into ruin.

Fresh food means constant shopping.

Falling slowly but surely into economic destitution, most Italians use tricks to survive. They cheat on taxes. They skimp on maintenance of their properties. They stop paying rent, buying medicines, eat less.  But this cannot last. 

Is there a way out? Perhaps, but it runs against all the  conservative Italian instincts: 

To create more jobs, make it easier to fire workers. The fact that no one can be fired from a job functions as a curse on the poor, because new jobs are not created or filled. Those who have job, even ones they hate or are under-qualified for, hang on to their jobs with a white knuckled death grip. No one takes a chance on something new. Greater job insecurity, ironically, would increase the turnover and vitality of the job market. 

To get money flowing in the economy, tax property. Real estate is to Italy what the stock market is to the US and savings accounts are for Germany. That is were the wealth is stashed. But real estate is not a productive investment, a house, unlike a business or an investment, does not create jobs. By taxing home ownership, and using the revenue to reducing taxes on labor,  Italians would be forced to sell and spend the gain on something more productive for the economy. But this is hard for Italians, barely making ends meet, but inheritors of a long tradition of valuing home ownership, to swallow. Berlusconi made much hay campaigning against this in the last election. 

Falling surely into destitution,
most Italians use economic tricks to survive. 

To get the population off the death spiral, it is time for welcoming immigrants, and their new ideas and habits and demands, instead of fighting them every step of the way. Italy needs growth and investment, and that requires loosening all the state regulations that keep the economy and society an insiders-only game. Let the sunshine in. 

So, to create more jobs, Italians need to give up job security, lose their second homes, and let go control of what their country looks like (and sounds like). In essence, to gamble on an uncertain future, while relinquishing some of the social gains that made the past more stable and secure.

In other words, to save the Italy, Italians may need to relinquish what, from the outside at least, is seen as the Italian lifestyle --slow, sweet, unchanging.