Hundreds camp on sweltering Rome street amid tussle over squatted building

Rome, Italy – Ana Bizdoaca has stopped expecting to be able to sleep on a mattress on the pavement a few streets from Rome’s Termini station. A heatwave has pushed temperatures past 40 degrees Celsius (104F).

“Our hearts have been torn to pieces,” Bizdoaca said on the ninth night of missing sleep.

Around her, some 300 people, including vulnerable people and about 100 children, from across the world, are doing the same.

Behind them stands the seven-storey former office block known as Spin Time, a squatted building where they all lived until days ago. Bizdoaca has lived there since 2013.

First occupied in 2013, it became home to many, including 140 families from more than 20 countries. It started with a simple idea at its centre: housing as a fundamental right.

The residents have been outside since July 29, when a small fire broke out in the evening in a lower floor room where nobody lived. Residents put it out within minutes, before the fire brigade arrived, and the damage was minimal.

Police evacuated the building and magistrates placed it under judicial seizure. It was declared unfit, and residents are now let back in one at a time, escorted by police, only to collect documents and essentials.

Food arrives at lunchtime from volunteers in the surrounding district, along with water, mattresses, and clothes. Thousands have passed through over the past nine days, including dozens of politicians, singers and actors. In the evenings, an open-air cinema gives the camp’s children something to watch other than the street.