What the decree on abusive houses of Ischia-Corriere.it provided for

What did the 2018 Genoa decree provide for abusive houses in Ischia?

«I worked on that rule – replies Bruno Molinaro, the Ischia lawyer specialized in the defense of those who built illegal buildings – and I sent the text to the mayors who were in contact with Matteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio. Article 25 introduced a preferential lane for the examination of applications for regularization of houses damaged or destroyed by the 2017 earthquake. It also established that the applications would all be examined on the basis of the parameters of the 1985 amnesties, the Craxi-Nicolazzi one , and in 1994, the first of the Berlusconi government, even if the abuses had been carried out in a later period, provided that they were up to March 31, 2003». A detail that is far from negligible, because if the first and second amnesty prevented the condoning only of the buildings built from scratch in areas subject to absolute non-building restrictions, the 2003 law also blocked the amnesty for illegal houses built in areas subject to relative non-building restrictions. The amnesty of 2003 also imposed more stringent constraints in relation to the volumes that can be forgiven”.

How many building amnesty applications have been presented in Ischia since 1985?

“About 27,000 – replies Sergio Costa, the former Minister of the Environment who as general of the forestry carabinieri carried out numerous investigative activities on the island relating precisely to illegal building -. Naturally, everything is included in this data: from a single room built without a permit to a house built from scratch without a licence. I have seen many built on the ridges of landslides or along the water drainage paths». Costa adds: “The requests for amnesty that have been examined in Ischia and on which there has been a decision are currently around 1,300”.

Out of 27,000 applications, how many are those relating to new homes?

«According to statistics from the municipal offices, they make up at least half of the total: 13,500. In essence, at least 13,500 apartments have arisen without any building permit. Overall, there are 90,000 rooms on the island. The dimensions of the properties built illegally vary from 60 to 120 square meters».

How are the applications for building amnesty distributed among the six Municipalities of the island?

«Legambiente provides some data relating to three of the six Municipalities: in Forio 8,530 applications; in Casamicciola 3,506 applications for amnesty; in Lacco Ameno 1.910. The environmental association estimates that after the Genoa decree of 2018 the number of damaged buildings that requested amnesty was around a thousand”.

How many demolition orders are there relating to illegal buildings built in Ischia and how many of them have been carried out so far?

«The administrative ones issued by the Municipalities are thousands, but none has ever been completed. There are around 10,000 of those resulting from a final criminal conviction. Of these, however, just over two per cent was carried out, also due to a difficulty in finding the indispensable economic resources. This is how it works: the Prosecutor asks the Municipalities to take action at the Deposits and Loans Fund, which must advance the money to the municipal administrations, which in turn should make them available to the magistrate. However, the Municipalities are often far from active, both for reasons of consensus and because it is not easy to recover the sums from the person responsible for the building abuse”.