In Rome, the “Nomad Camp system” is worth 24 million euros
In 2013, the Municipality of Rome spent more than 24 million euros to segregate and concentrate Roma people in “villages of solidarity” or in “centres of Roma gathering” and to evict them from informal housing arrangements. This is the out and out “system of camps” in the Capital city of Italy. As part of this “system of camps”, 35 public and private bodies operate and employ more than 400 workers, whom gain access to the municipality’s public money through private commitments rather than through public calls for competitive bids.
This is the picture that emerges from the “Campi Nomadi s.p.a.” report that Associazione 21 Luglio presented on 12 June 2014in the Roman Capitol. There is an uncontrolled river of public money that flows into this “system of camps” and that does not translate into social inclusion for the Roma community. On the contrary, this policy fuels a negative perception of Roma people in the eyes of the public opinion.
Of the 24.108.406 euros spent by the Municipality of Rome in 2013 to deal with the “Roma question”- a question which concerns eight thousand people, more than half of them children – 86,4% of the money was used to administrate, supervise and safeguard the “camps”. 13,2% of the money was spent on schooling, while only 0,4% of the total sum was actually destined to social inclusion of Roma people.
The Municipality of Rome has spent over 16 million euros to administrate 8 “villages of solidarity” in which 4.391 people live. Among these villages, the “camp” of Castel Romano, where 989 Roma people live, is the most expensive: over 5 million euros were spent on it only in 2013. Since the inception of the “camp” in 2005, the Municipality of Roma has already spent more than 270 thousand euros for a family consisting of five individuals.
The “centre of Roma gathering” in via Amarilli, one of the three existing structures in Rome (which cost about 6 million euros in 2013), is the formal settlement with the highest expenditure per capita. For each of the 130 inhabitants of the “centre”, only in the year reviewed by the report, the Municipality of Rome has spent 906 euros per month, in the face of an investment for the social inclusion of Roma people of 0%.
Finally, almost 2 million euros were spent to move from one part of the city to the other about 1.200 Roma people through 54 forced evictions.
As the inquiry of Associazione 21 Luglio shows, 35 public and private bodies operate in the “Nomad Camps Inc” business. Estimating that each of these bodies necessitates an average of 12 workers, there are over 400 individuals employed in the mechanisms of the “Roma question”. It is worrying is that the percentage of funds assigned directly to these bodies, without going through the regular process of public calls for competitive bids, is in some cases of 100%.
Among the organizations who operate in the “camp system”, the Consorzio Casa della Solidarietà (“the consortium house of solidarity”) and Risorse per Roma (“resources for Rome”) were the two major recipients of funds in 2013: 4.242.028 euros were given to the first, 3.757.050 euros to the latter. The other groups received funds that vary from 2 million euros to 100 thousands euros per year.
Considering such high economic and social costs, overcoming the “camps” is the only way that leads into a new direction that intersects with human rights.
There are many possible alternatives to the “camps” and Associazione 21 Luglio, in its report, has proposed as a concrete example a project of self-recovery. This project, in accordance with the Regional Law n.55 of 1998, would give housing to 22 families, of which 2 Roma families, a family of refugees, a family of migrants and other Italian families with housing problems. This project would start from the identification of an empty building amongst the 1.200 acres of abandoned properties present in the municipality of Rome.
Housing solutions which are not the camps and which aim at social inclusion have been already implemented in other Italian cities, like Messina and Padua where thanks to projects of self-recovery and self-construction, the cost is respectively of 10 thousand euros and 50 thousand euros per each Roma family of 5 people. In Rome, the same type of family who lives in the La Barbuta “camp” costs 155 thousand euros every five years to the Municipality.
«To segregate, concentrate and remove Roma people has a very high cost that Rome cannot and should not afford, » says Associazione 21 Luglio «Thus, we ask the administration to concretely commit to end the politics of the camps and the system which hides behind it and to reconvert the resources into projects of real social inclusion for the benefit of Roma and non-Roma citizens. It is urgent, then, that the mayor Marino intervenes to suspend the project of reconstruction of the “camp” that the Department of Social Policies wants to build in Via della Cesarina in the upcoming months. The reconstruction would be a significant expense in the budget planned in 2014 for the “camp system”».
Translation by Mira Peliti
DOWNLOAD THE REPORT IN ITALIAN