Spin Time Rome: 400 people left in limbo after talks fail to save occupied building

Talks between the city and the property's owners break down, leaving hundreds of people - many of them children - camped on the pavement in a heatwave. Spin Time Labs, a well-known occupied building in Rome, is at the centre of a housing and political crisis after the owners of the property rejected a last-minute offer from the city council to buy it, dashing hopes that its residents could soon return home. Spin Time occupies a nine-storey former office block belonging to the state pension body Inpdap, on Via di Santa Croce in Gerusalemme near Termini station, in the Esquilino district. The building was occupied in 2013 and has since grown into one of Italy's largest examples of housing self-organisation, home to more than 400 people from over 25 countries, including at least 90 minors. As well as accommodation, the building has long hosted social and cultural projects, including a concert hall and a social kitchen, and has become a symbol of urban regeneration beyond the world of housing activism. The fire and the eviction The crisis began on the night of 29 July, when a fire broke out in a storeroom inside the building. Firefighters and civil protection teams declared the building unsafe, and residents have not been allowed back in since. The building was placed under judicial seizure, and what began as an evacuation has - in effect - become an eviction, with families forced to camp in tents and makeshift shelters on the pavement outside in the summer heat. Conditions have been severe: earlier this week, a one-and-a-half-year-old child was rushed to hospital in a serious condition after collapsing in the scorching heat. Animal welfare group LAV also set up an emergency veterinary unit outside the building and, after negotiating access with police and prosecutors, worked over several days to rescue the cats, dogs and other pets left trapped inside. Legal status and the city's failed offer The building's owner, the real-estate fund Investire Sgr, has for years sought to reclaim the property and had already won a court ruling ordering Italy's interior ministry to pay it over €21 million in compensation for the failure to clear the occupation, plus a running penalty of roughly €207,000 a month. Interior minister Matteo Piantedosi had signalled his intention to have the building cleared even before the fire. In the days after the blaze, Rome mayor Roberto Gualtieri and the city's housing councillor Tobia Zevi opened talks with Investire Sgr in the prefecture, with discreet backing from the Catholic Church, over a possible purchase of the building by the city, modelled on a previous public-housing conversion at Porto Fluviale. The plan was for a binding preliminary commitment that would let residents move back in while the sale was finalised. On Thursday, however, after a technical meeting in the prefecture and a further round of talks at city hall, the owners rejected the proposal outright. Announcing the news on La7's In Onda, Gualtieri said the answer was an "irrevocable no", adding that despite having presented what he believed was the best possible offer, he had "had the impression the decision had already been taken" and that the owners had cited unspecified legal weaknesses in the city's proposal, which he disputed. He said he was "irritated" that even the Church's intervention had failed to change the owners' position. According to news agency ANSA, Investire Sgr said there were no longer "conditions of legality and safety" to allow use of the building. Spin Time's president, Paolo Perrini, was reported by news agency AGI to have left the meeting in tears; Gualtieri left without speaking to waiting journalists. What the city says happens next With the acquisition off the table for now, the council says its priority is rehousing. Gualtieri said city authorities would be in a position to offer "dignified accommodation" to residents from the following Monday, with the first allocations of public housing possible within around 60 days for those who qualify, including in the same municipio (city borough) where possible, with school transport guaranteed. The council also pledged to try to preserve "the social and cultural value of the Spin Time Labs experience" by finding it a dedicated space - though, if it is revived, it would have to be at a different address. Activists, artists and public figures rally behind Spin Time Actress and satirist Sabina Guzzanti has visited the encampment repeatedly and issued public appeals for donations of essentials such as stackable chairs and clothing. Other high-profile visitors in recent days have included film director Matteo Garrone, writer Roberto Saviano and singer Ditonellapiaga, who performed a street concert outside the building. On Thursday, cartoonist Zerocalcare visited, offering solidarity to residents and leaving behind a drawing of the affected families captioned "more humanity, less profit", which was hung on the building's gates. Political context Politically, the case has become a flashpoint between left and right. Centre-left councillors and MPs, including Sinistra Civica Ecologista and the Partito Democratico (PD) have called for institutional dialogue rather than a "security-only" approach, warning that an eviction would open a serious social emergency. On the right, Fratelli d'Italia figures, including culture committee chair Federico Mollicone, have called for the law to be enforced and the building cleared without further delay. The building's history has also drawn in the Church before: in 2019, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, the pope's almoner, broke a police seal and climbed down a manhole to personally restore electricity to Spin Time after the supply was cut over unpaid bills, in a gesture he called "desperate" and for which he took full responsibility - a move that caused a diplomatic spat with the then interior minister, Matteo Salvini. Interior ministry: "This is the end for Spin Time" Corriere della Sera reported on Friday that, in the wake of the failed talks, the interior ministry has made its position unambiguous: nobody will be allowed back into the former Inpdap building. With both the council's negotiations and a parallel mediation effort by the Diocese of Rome having come to nothing on Thursday afternoon, the ministry's line is that the Spin Time experience, at least in that building, is now over for the roughly 400 former residents. Catholic charity Caritas has stepped in to offer a building to house evacuees left without anywhere else to go. Around 250 people who have not been able to find shelter with friends or relatives, or who have chosen to remain camped outside in the hope of a last-minute resolution, are still living in tents in the street below the sealed building, which continues to be guarded by police. Officers will reportedly remain in place both to prevent unrest among former residents and to head off any attempt by outside groups to exploit the protests, while the interior ministry has pledged to help the council identify available public properties to rehouse those left on the street. CasaPound The Corriere frames the end of the experience as both a social and a political rupture for the city: socially, because it risks eliminating a rare example of successful integration that has often filled gaps left by absent institutions; and politically, because Gualtieri and the centre-left, in seeking to buy the building, effectively acknowledged Spin Time as a model that works, despite its illegal origins, yet were unable to save it. Meanwhile the right, celebrating Piantedosi's hard line, still has to address the case of the extreme-right CasaPound's occupied building on nearby Via Napoleone III, occupied since 2003, which is also allegedly on the prefecture's eviction list and which observers expect to face the same treatment now that Spin Time's fate has apparently been decided. In a Facebook post on Friday morning, Spin Time called an assembly at 17.00, writing: "Spin Time's time is not finished. From today we will fight to give back to the city the building in which we have lived and brought to life for the past 13 years. To Spin Time we owe everything, for Spin Time we will do everything." Photo Spin Time Labs - Facebook

Wanted in Rome Wanted in Rome · Wire Report · 4 hours ago · 7 min read

Spin Time Rome: 400 people left in limbo after talks fail to save occupied building

Image via wire syndication · Wanted in Rome

WIRE — Talks between the city and the property's owners break down, leaving hundreds of people - many of them children - camped on the pavement in a heatwave. Spin Time Labs, a well-known occupied building in Rome, is at the centre of a housing and political crisis after the owners of the property rejected a last-minute offer from the city council to buy it, dashing hopes that its residents could soon return home. Spin Time occupies a nine-storey former office block belonging to the state pension body Inpdap, on Via di Santa Croce in Gerusalemme near Termini station, in the Esquilino district. The building was occupied in 2013 and has since grown into one of Italy's largest examples of housing self-organisation, home to more than 400 people from over 25 countries, including at least 90 minors. As well as accommodation, the building has long hosted social and cultural projects, including a concert hall and a social kitchen, and has become a symbol of urban regeneration beyond the world of housing activism. The fire and the eviction The crisis began on the night of 29 July, when a fire broke out in a storeroom inside the building. Firefighters and civil protection teams declared the building unsafe, and residents have not been allowed back in since. The building was placed under judicial seizure, and what began as an evacuation has - in effect - become an eviction, with families forced to camp in tents and makeshift shelters on the pavement outside in the summer heat. Conditions have been severe: earlier this week, a one-and-a-half-year-old child was rushed to hospital in a serious condition after collapsing in the scorching heat. Animal welfare group LAV also set up an emergency veterinary unit outside the building and, after negotiating access with police and prosecutors, worked over several days to rescue the cats, dogs and other pets left trapped inside. Legal status and the city's failed offer The building's owner, the real-estate fund Investire Sgr, has for years sought to reclaim the property and had already won a court ruling ordering Italy's interior ministry to pay it over €21 million in compensation for the failure to clear the occupation, plus a running penalty of roughly €207,000 a month. Interior minister Matteo Piantedosi had signalled his intention to have the building cleared even before the fire. In the days after the blaze, Rome mayor Roberto Gualtieri and the city's housing councillor Tobia Zevi opened talks with Investire Sgr in the prefecture, with discreet backing from the Catholic Church, over a possible purchase of the building by the city, modelled on a previous public-housing conversion at Porto Fluviale. The plan was for a binding preliminary commitment that would let residents move back in while the sale was finalised. On Thursday, however, after a technical meeting in the prefecture and a further round of talks at city hall, the owners rejected the proposal outright. Announcing the news on La7's In Onda, Gualtieri said the answer was an "irrevocable no", adding that despite having presented what he believed was the best possible offer, he had "had the impression the decision had already been taken" and that the owners had cited unspecified legal weaknesses in the city's proposal, which he disputed. He said he was "irritated" that even the Church's intervention had failed to change the owners' position. According to news agency ANSA, Investire Sgr said there were no longer "conditions of legality and safety" to allow use of the building. Spin Time's president, Paolo Perrini, was reported by news agency AGI to have left the meeting in tears; Gualtieri left without speaking to waiting journalists. What the city says happens next With the acquisition off the table for now, the council says its priority is rehousing. Gualtieri said city authorities would be in a position to offer "dignified accommodation" to residents from the following Monday, with the first allocations of public housing possible within around 60 days for those who qualify, including in the same municipio (city borough) where possible, with school transport guaranteed. The council also pledged to try to preserve "the social and cultural value of the Spin Time Labs experience" by finding it a dedicated space - though, if it is revived, it would have to be at a different address. Activists, artists and public figures rally behind Spin Time Actress and satirist Sabina Guzzanti has visited the encampment repeatedly and issued public appeals for donations of essentials such as stackable chairs and clothing. Other high-profile visitors in recent days have included film director Matteo Garrone, writer Roberto Saviano and singer Ditonellapiaga, who performed a street concert outside the building. On Thursday, cartoonist Zerocalcare visited, offering solidarity to residents and leaving behind a drawing of the affected families captioned "more humanity, less profit", which was hung on the building's gates. Political context Politically, the case has become a flashpoint between left and right. Centre-left councillors and MPs, including Sinistra Civica Ecologista and the Partito Democratico (PD) have called for institutional dialogue rather than a "security-only" approach, warning that an eviction would open a serious social emergency. On the right, Fratelli d'Italia figures, including culture committee chair Federico Mollicone, have called for the law to be enforced and the building cleared without further delay. The building's history has also drawn in the Church before: in 2019, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, the pope's almoner, broke a police seal and climbed down a manhole to personally restore electricity to Spin Time after the supply was cut over unpaid bills, in a gesture he called "desperate" and for which he took full responsibility - a move that caused a diplomatic spat with the then interior minister, Matteo Salvini. Interior ministry: "This is the end for Spin Time" Corriere della Sera reported on Friday that, in the wake of the failed talks, the interior ministry has made its position unambiguous: nobody will be allowed back into the former Inpdap building. With both the council's negotiations and a parallel mediation effort by the Diocese of Rome having come to nothing on Thursday afternoon, the ministry's line is that the Spin Time experience, at least in that building, is now over for the roughly 400 former residents. Catholic charity Caritas has stepped in to offer a building to house evacuees left without anywhere else to go. Around 250 people who have not been able to find shelter with friends or relatives, or who have chosen to remain camped outside in the hope of a last-minute resolution, are still living in tents in the street below the sealed building, which continues to be guarded by police. Officers will reportedly remain in place both to prevent unrest among former residents and to head off any attempt by outside groups to exploit the protests, while the interior ministry has pledged to help the council identify available public properties to rehouse those left on the street. CasaPound The Corriere frames the end of the experience as both a social and a political rupture for the city: socially, because it risks eliminating a rare example of successful integration that has often filled gaps left by absent institutions; and politically, because Gualtieri and the centre-left, in seeking to buy the building, effectively acknowledged Spin Time as a model that works, despite its illegal origins, yet were unable to save it. Meanwhile the right, celebrating Piantedosi's hard line, still has to address the case of the extreme-right CasaPound's occupied building on nearby Via Napoleone III, occupied since 2003, which is also allegedly on the prefecture's eviction list and which observers expect to face the same treatment now that Spin Time's fate has apparently been decided. In a Facebook post on Friday morning, Spin Time called an assembly at 17.00, writing: "Spin Time's time is not finished. From today we will fight to give back to the city the building in which we have lived and brought to life for the past 13 years. To Spin Time we owe everything, for Spin Time we will do everything." Photo Spin Time Labs - Facebook

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