Public housing in San Paolo di Bari, the complaint: «My 85-year-old mother lives among cockroaches, mold and humidity»

At number 32 Via Abruzzi in the San Paolo neighborhood, in the public housing, the degradation is beyond imagination. Amalia Rollo has lived on the first floor for over sixty years. She is eighty-five years old and moves around with a wheelchair because she has difficulty walking. The stench of mold is at times overcome by that of the sewer. The walls are peeling and the load-bearing one in the corridor is swollen with water. A knife with a twenty-centimeter blade is run through them. The veranda wobbles and the baseboards are reduced to a minimum. "We spent our weekend," says her son, Natale De Fano, "killing cockroaches and closing the sinks in the bathroom and kitchen. I counted thirty-five. They were everywhere. I had to throw away blankets and pillows. It was an invasion."

The same condominium administrator, last June, had written to the attention of Arca Puglia, in black and white, the conditions of the entire condominium, reporting broken vertical sewer pipes in correspondence with eight apartments, with the related spillage of sewage in the apartments where children and elderly people live "bringing the living conditions almost to the limit of usability due to precarious hygienic and sanitary conditions with the presence of bad odors and foul-smelling sewage". Not only that: the presence of black water in the underground rooms was also reported. The firefighters also confirmed this, "they found the perimeter walls wet with water and the concrete parts deeply affected by humidity". The firefighters also closed "a condominium room for the exclusive use of a condominium owner present on the ground floor, occupied by personal objects and construction waste material, with the probable presence of asbestos fibers".

"The problems - De Fano explains - have multiplied over the years. I have often painted the walls myself but stopping the humidity and mold has been impossible. My mother is now paying the consequences". In fact, Mrs. Amalia has respiratory problems probably attributable to the conditions in which she lives: "The mold is concentrated in her bedroom. I have asked several times to change accommodation. I have written almost two hundred certified emails: 178 to be precise. But the responsibilities are bounced between the Arca and the Municipality. We are at the limit". Yes, because Mrs. Amalia, in addition to being forced to live in just under eighty square meters surrounded by the most absolute degradation, cannot even go out. "There is no elevator and the stairs are unsafe. There is not even a railing that would allow her to help herself. She lives barricaded. I asked and obtained permission to work from home because two very unpleasant episodes occurred. Criminals tried to break into our home in broad daylight. On both occasions, my mother's loud screams forced the two to give up and disappear. But it can't always go well. So I prefer to stay with her. What hurts me is the indifference. I have never received clear answers. We only ask for a dignified home. We ask to be treated like human beings and not like second-class citizens."

The suffocating heat that makes you forget the biting cold of winter, takes your breath away. So at eighty-five years old, the life of a woman "prisoner" between the four peeling walls of her house is consumed. In the company of the stench of sewer and mold.