Campaign For A Living Venice

The protest action took place on the night of December 27, during which stickers and signs appeared bearing the words “Your house was My house”

28 December 2024

by Maria Ducoli

Stickers against short-term rentals, to claim Venice’s right to remain a lively and lived-in city, possibly even inhabited. The night of December 27 saw a genuine blitz against tourist rentals, involving several cities in Italy: from Florence to Genoa, from Rimini to Milan, citizens took to the streets equipped with stickers which they attached to keyboxes, bearing different slogans: yellow and black adhesive tape with an X above it, and the words “rimozione forXata” (forced removal) in Florence, red tape and the words “tu casa era mi casa” (your house was my house) in Venice , where posters were also hung in various areas of the city, from Castello to Toletta, as well as in San Marco, San Stin and San Barnaba. In Milan, purple stickers appeared with the words “Meno affitti brevi più case per tutti” (Fewer short-term rentals, more homes for everyone), and in Rimini, as in Genoa, there were yellow stickers with the slogan “il tuo BnB il nostro sfratto” (your BnB is our eviction).

The protest

The protest comes a month after the circular from the Ministry of the Interior confirmed the irregularity of the widespread check-ins in B&Bs taking place without in-person verification of guests’ documents, an issue that had already raised for some time by associations and organizations that are active in Venice regarding the subject of residential accommodation, from OCIO to Alta Tensione Abitativa (ATA). “It is not just a question of educating tourists to respect the city, as Mayor Luigi Brugnaro has emphasized,” commented Giovanni Leone of ATA, “which is of course an important aspect, but here we are dealing with a public safety issue. And especially in this historical moment, where attention is high also following the episodes of terrorism, we cannot take an issue such as this lightly”.

The sticker blitz was born in Florence, where the G7 of Tourism was held in November. In the same period, several other associations had the idea of deploying stickers and posters to express their dissent regarding the proliferation of B&Bs to the detriment of residential accommodation. “A civil sign of dissent” commented Leone.

Those who joined the “spontaneous reaction campaign” against tourist rentals, as collectives from all over Italy called it, were not only the entities on the front line in the battle for residential housing, but also many citizens who at first approached those who were pasting out the stickers with curiosity, then came forward to ask to participate, tired of the situation that is afflicting more and more cities, Venice first and foremost.

“Every apartment rented for a short period of time is a house taken away from residential use, perhaps permanently” we read in the note released by the collectives, “While tourism certainly represents a significant economic sector, the benefits for the city are now largely outweighed by unsustainable costs, which also lead to widespread underground work. The keyboxes are a clear representation of this: this is not a question of decorum, but of livability. This is the reason for the protests that have been taking place in many cities in recent months.”

Source: La Nuova di Venezia e Mestre