MILAN (AP) – The coronavirus pandemic did not produce Elena Simone’s first hard budget patch. The single mother, 49, left the labor market when the global financial crisis of 2008 hit Italy and never returned, but created a package of small jobs that secured her. and the youngest of his three children.
Everything changed with the first blockade of COVID-19 in Italy in the spring.
With the schools closed, so did Simona’s coffee service. And her house cleaning concerts were dry. While others returned to work when the blockade ended, Simone froze.
“It was a time when we only ate carrots,” she recalled from her kitchen decorated with colorful plush characters in the shape of vegetables.
For the first time in her life, Simone needed help to put the food on the table. At the urging of a friend, she signed up to have access to grocery stores operated by the Roman Catholic charity Caritas. Her eligibility covers her until January and she hopes to no longer participate in charity until “to make room for people who need her even more.”
The charity that serves more than 5 million people in the archdiocese of Milan, Caritas Ambrosiana, says the pandemic reveals for the first time the depth of economic insecurity in the northern region of Lombardy, which generates 20% of the country’s gross domestic product.
Simone, who has two adult children and a 10-year-old son at home, is typical of the new poor in Italy. These are people who managed to get through the 2008 financial crisis, staying away from the radar of Italy’s welfare system, relying on informal jobs, the gray market, and the help of friends and family.
But between the near-total blockade of spring in Italy, the introduction of a partial blockade when the virus rose again in the autumn and the continuous number the pandemic has on the Italian economy, the thin threads that have allowed people to keep employment together they broke.
Nowhere in Italy is this more obvious than in Lombardy, where COVID-19 exploded for the first time in Europe. Italian agriculture lobby Coldiretti estimates the virus has created 300,000 new poor people, based on surveys of dozens of charities operating in the region.
Caritas Ambrosiana provided assistance to 9,000 people during the spring lockout, of which 20% reported that their financial situation worsened “drastically” during the 10-week closure. In October, nearly 700 families applied for food aid for the first time.
At national level, one third of all people seeking help from Caritas during the pandemic are recipients for the first time, and in a reversal of normal trends, most are Italians and not foreign residents.
More than 40 organizations supply food daily in Milan, the financial capital of Italy. One of the largest, Pane Quotidiano, serves about 3,500 meals a day. Many of those in need once worked in restaurants and hotels, which were sanctioned mainly by coronavirus restrictions or as domestic help.
“It’s even more widespread than I knew, especially for a rich city like Milan,” said Caritas Ambrosiana spokesman Francesco Chiavarini. “These precarious jobs have been lost. And we don’t know when or if they will be restored. “
Researchers at Bocconi University in Milan said in a working paper for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development that blue-collar workers without college degrees paid the highest price for Italy’s virus restrictions. Half reported a drop in their salaries, compared to only 20% of the biggest winners, and many did not have the luxury of working remotely.
“What we are seeing is a substantial increase in inequality,” said Bocconi University researcher Vincenzo Galasso.
Those without solid employment contracts are the most exposed in the pandemic that has already killed more than 68,000 people in Italy, the largest number of deaths in Europe.
Simone found out too late that her coffee contract describes her as a casual worker, which means she has no reason to ask for government support to replace the lost income. Her cleaning jobs were completely free and she recovered only two of the dozens she had before the pandemic.
Even when workers qualify for Italy’s short-term public-private redundancy scheme, the money came late and is generally inadequate to cover a family’s basic expenses, Chiavarini said. The basic coverage is 400 euros ($ 490) per month, but monthly rents in a city like Milan start at about 600 euros ($ 735).
Food security appears to be a key issue as the pandemic enters the winter.
Progetto Arca, which houses shelters and other social services in Milan, began operating a food truck last month after seeing homeless people filling their stomachs with documents for restaurants and bars starve during a partial autumn blockade. , when many units closed.
And not just the homeless who come with the food truck. One recent night, a well-dressed man, dressed in a quilted jacket and dress pants, waited sideways until the line dissipated. He identified himself as a lawyer, but declined to comment and asked not to be photographed because he took two hot meals and two bags of food for the next day, one for his companion waiting at home.
To date, government moratoriums on the eviction and dismissal of contract workers have helped maintain a ceiling on what charities see as an emerging poverty crisis.
“When they are raised, we will see the real price we have to pay for this pandemic,” Chiavarini said. “We celebrate Milan as the capital of innovation, but under these skyscrapers we are so proud of, there is a hidden world where people live in real precarious conditions. “
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