Milan, the Pd primaries seen from public housing: ‘Everyone here was communists, then the party disappeared and we were left alone. In section? Only 35 votes’

“The Democratic Party is like the building I’m in: there are different people who live close but they must want to understand each other in order to try to be together”. Mr. Saverio lives in Milan, in San Siro district, for over thirty years. An area that houses the stadium but also six thousand social housing. “They live here 15-16 thousand people”explains the president of the neighborhood committee David Micco. But in the Dem section of via Monreale, “only 35 out of about ninety registered” went to vote in the first phase. This is told by Gian Mario, a pensioner from the neighborhood, who is one of the thirty-five voters. “But in Article One – he specifies – I was enrolled in the PCI but never in the Democratic Party”. In recent weeks he has followed the presentation of the congressional motions live, remaining surprised by one fact: “the issues of the neighborhood have not been mentioned which seem to be unrelated to the discussion”. Yet in these parts the left was full of votes in the past. “But there was the PCI” jokes Alessandro, another pensioner who attends the San Siro neighborhood committee. He too remembers with nostalgia the era in which “there were so many members of the PCI that they had to divide a section into two. But the decline began in the eighties when the money to put the public housing in order e all the parties didn’t care. I’m on the left but the left was primarily responsible for what happened”.

And public housing started to falling apart. Lodovina, who lives in the neighbourhood, shows the facades with the plaster falling off and the stairs of the buildings left to their own devices: “Not all of them – he is keen to clarify – but it cannot possibly happen”. She too he always voted left and will continue to vote for it “reluctantly”. Why? “They don’t come to ask for anything, they don’t show up, we see more of those of the other parties”. And the right here has gained support. “San Siro is not geographically far from the centre, here we have three metro stops but there are some social and economic barriers that keep people away” explains Micco.

“There are now two Milans: the one of decent people and the forgotten one” explains Alessandro. Two souls that coexist here at San Siro just a few meters apart. On one side, the social housing with peeling plaster, on the other construction sites for new residential complexes which will be sold for more than 6 thousand euros per square metre. “The new secretary of the Democratic Party should start from these two words: home and work, work and home,” they say. Property prices in Milan have skyrocketed and newcomers are struggling to find accommodation. “But it is full of empty houses – comments Lodovina – only on my scale out of twenty apartments, ten are vacant”. According to the inhabitants of San Siro, the Democratic Party should start from this to try to reverse course. The alternative is “breakdown”, or “suicide”, as they call it around here. But there is still hope for change, for Saverio: “The Democratic Party is a party of human beings and like all human beings, it can change”