“We left Cherkasy in early March. We lived with a family in Milan. Then they asked us to leave. We looked for an emergency apartment, we were ready to pay the rent on a regular basis, but nobody wants to contract with us. Desperate, we looked for an Airbnb, then another. Looks like they’re renewing our contract for another month. In the meantime we have started making cakes again ». They are a young woman and her mother, in Ukraine they had a pastry shop, and telling their story on her Facebook profile is Tetyana Bezruchenko, information manager of the European cultural association “Italy-Ukraine Maidan” (maidan means square ndr).
Italy is slow in organizing
After the emergency, phase two of reception – six months after the start of the conflict in Ukraine – seems to have dramatically stalled and show a new urgency: the difficulty of finding permanent rented accommodation for the displaced. “In this sense – explains Tetyana Bezruchenko – unfortunately we are receiving several reports: as soon as the real estate agent understands that Ukrainian citizens are looking for the apartment, perhaps with children, the unavailability of the lease is immediately triggered”. The obstacles, then, are different: from the delays in assigning the tax code to those seeking temporary EU protection, to the request for economic guarantees. From the advance of several months of rent up to requesting the payment of the entire year. “This – adds Tetyana Bezruchenko – makes it difficult even for those who have found a job to find a home, as in the case of the mother and daughter pastry chef”. From North to South, the picture appears fairly uniform, so much so that it was debated during the Fifth Conference with the associations of the Ukrainian Diaspora which took place on 21 July. In fact, what emerges from Bezruchenko’s analysis is a tendency: a sort of retreat of acceptance, which now risks becoming mistrust “if not hostility”. Just that initial impetus which has not been followed, in many contexts, by an organized institutional response, is now showing shortness of breath.
The delusion
A danger that Bezruchenko had immediately denounced: «It is yet another proof that there is no structural reception system. This emergency was supposed to be a push for change, but it didn’t happen. Time was wasted in discussing marginal issues without being able to make an overall and more general discourse, which goes beyond this emergency, on reception and integration ». In fact, many associations have highlighted the same type of difficulty, also intercepting possible solutions, such as the possibility of access to social housing even for Ukrainian displaced persons. Another related issue, the associations record, is the lack of places for those who arrive now, after the first acute phase.
A concrete proposal comes from the Councilor for Welfare and Health of the municipality of Milan, Lamberto Bertolè: “On the subject of rents – he says – the Municipalities can do little, however you can work on the meeting between supply and demand”. Bertolè’s idea is simple: «To direct part of the resources provided for reception to the Third sector, which can act as guarantor». In fact, in this relationship between private individuals there is no third party capable of guaranteeing both. «And this third part – he adds – can be precisely the Third sector. On the other hand, it is a model that Milan has already experimented with the agency for accessible rental Milano Abitare ».