Florence, Mandela’s smile is on public housing, but inside is mold
Outside there is Mandela that I turn around. Inside only degraded. It is the paradox of the public housing in piazza Leopoldo, right next to the Coop shopping center. The smiling face of the South African politician and activist Nelson Mandela stands out on the external wall of the Erp accommodation, depicted in the beautiful mural inaugurated in 2018, 14 meters by 9, created by the Neapolitan street artist Jorit and called “The condominium of rights”. Inside the building, however, the inhabitants have been denouncing heavy infiltrations for some time. Other than rights ironize many. One only has to take a look in the stairwell to see the naked eye the moisture soaking up the cracked and damaged walls. The humidity is not only on the stairs, but also in some apartments, such as the one on the top floor, with ceilings and walls browned with mold. Every year we have to repaint, explains the tenant of the sixth piano.
A situation that, as told by Stamp Toscana in recent days, has been going on for years now. We live in a paradox – reports Silvia Cammilli, responsible for the self-management of the Erp housing in piazza Leopoldo – Outside the houses present themselves with the radiant smile of Mandela, but inside there is the most total despair. To combat the humidity, cleaning work has begun on the outside, maumidit still there: The works must be completed within nova guainta days, instead they started in September and are still in progress, added Ms. Cammilli. To make matters worse, a fire broke out last December 20 involving a part of the garages below the building. The firefighters intervened to put out the flames, but this piece of garage is still all blackened: charred cars and ceilings, unusable parking spaces. What do we have to wait for someone to come and fix our garage?
The structure is managed by Casa Spa, while the outside and the whole square lives in the Municipality. The management of the garages, on the other hand, is entrusted to an external administrator. A story on which the union of tenants Sunia also intervened: Finally after a thousand vicissitudes, the administration started the waterproofing and reconstruction work of the square – said the Tuscan secretary Laura Grandi – These are works necessary upstream, to intervene subsequently on the big problems of humidity of the Erp block. Unfortunately, the activity of the company in charge was discontinuous and execution times are being postponed: the construction site is not kept in the right condition and most likely the fire caused by the material left on the ventilation grates of the underground garages. Speaking for the tenants, Grandi adds: The inhabitants are seriously and rightly worried. The request that the ‘condominium of rights’ is really for them: the right to live in a decent and healthy way inside their home. They also require that the works in the square be finished as soon as possible. In fact, an important part of district 5, an area so lived in and with a high presence of residents, cannot bear such a great degradation situation. Not to mention the evening and night hours, add the residents, when Piazza Leopoldo becomes an open-air shop.
If you want to stay updated on the news from Florence, subscribe to the Corriere Fiorentino newsletter for free. It arrives every day straight to your inbox at 12 noon. Just click here
21 January 2022 | 06:44
© REPRODUCTION RESERVED