Evicted From Eternity_ The Restructuring of Modern Rome - Michael Herzfeld [184]
While a few local leftists were openly sympathetic, most, following the more usual Roman habit, declined to become involved. Not all were upset by the tenants' increasingly monochromatic political affiliation. One neighbor criticized those young and upwardly mobile tenants who had moved away, leaving their elders-the majority of the current residents-to face the decline of their old homes. This artisan-merchant pointed out that he, while paying a high rent in a relatively nearby and affluent suburb, had continued to receive an absurdly low rent-about one-ninth of what he was paying for his suburban home-from his tenants. He did this because they were Monticiani; he felt it was better that locals should live there, even if he stood to lose a great deal of money (and of course he was under much less pressure to spend money on improvements as a result, since the tenants would have been afraid to rock the boat). He was even willing to contemplate selling the house to his tenants, but they declined the offer and ended up living far outside the city-a common pattern. Because he had been entrepreneurial himself, he found it hard to sympathize completely with people like his tenants, or indeed those of Via degli Ibernesi, all of whom had in his view buried their heads in the sand and were now facing a disaster they could have avoided had they sought alternative housing in time. He had acquired his own house in Monti, where he had previously lived on a rental basis, when the previous owner, under the previous laws, decided to sell off the property and offered it to him at an affordable price-a good deal for both sides.
But the Via degli Ibernesi tenants had never been offered such an option. Their proprietor was an institution, not an individual; indeed, many voices were heard during this period complaining that, while they could understand an individual's desire to use a patrimonio to house relatives, they opposed the idea that a bank or similar institution, with no real investment in local social life, could claim the same protections as a private owner. In the one meeting at which representatives of the bank consented to meet with the tenants and various officials and politicians, they had simply asserted that the bank was a private entity and therefore had no obligation to participate in social management. To the tenants' protest that the bank also had social responsibilities toward the city whose finances it managed, the bank's representatives responded with silence. Their tactic was to refuse all accountability beyond that specifically laid down in law.
The day after the protest, an eviction was scheduled, although no one seemed to know which family it would affect. Even though Paolo was able to find out that no action was likely, he prepared for a siege, and was ready to call on "three hundred armed people" to come to the tenants' support. Given that a major television station was also suddenly taking an interest, the visual aspects became important as well, so he decided to "dust off" ~ripolverare~ an old banner with its defiant slogan: "NO TO DEPORTATION." And he turned again to his supporters in the political world; while De Luca was already hard at work drumming up interest in the national parliament and arguing for the case for a further stay of eviction at the headquarters of the police administration, the Alleanza nazionale activists-from the local councilors to the vice president of the national party, Senator Giulio Maceratini20 -started showing up in force the next morning. It would have