E/C.12/75/D/226/2021 E/C.12/75/D/227/2021 Communication No. 226/2021 2.8 Mr. Saydawi arrived in Italy in 1988 and has been living in a house located at 37 via Latino Silvio with his wife and three children since 2000. He was earning approximately €1,778 per month prior to the lockdown imposed during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, but his full-time employment was replaced with an arrangement of occasional collaboration with his former employer following a pandemic-related restructuring, which resulted in a drop in income of about half. Mr. Saydawi estimates that he spent approximately €25,000 on the first stage of the renovation of the houses, in addition to the manual work that he undertook informally. 2.9 On 23 March 2011, Mr. Saydawi’s counsel wrote a letter to the railway company on behalf of his client’s family and two other families, informing it that they would be open to regularizing their housing situation by becoming formal tenants. In addition to the requests for social housing mentioned above, Mr. Saydawi filed another request for public housing with the Housing Department of the City Council of Rome on 9 June 2011. His request for emergency housing of 16 February 2021 was denied on 24 February 2021, and the City Council of Rome gave him the phone number of an organization that provides support to persons in a situation of homelessness. On 18 June 2021, Mr. Saydawi requested another meeting with social services with a view to obtaining social housing. Mr. Saydawi’s children are adults and are economically independent, but, owing to the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, they are unable to help their parents financially. Consequently, he and his wife would have no alternative housing if they were to be evicted from the house and would become homeless. The only alternative offered by the authorities was to separate the men and the women, with the women housed in emergency centres and the men remaining homeless, which they did not consider to be a viable option. Communication No. 227/2021 2.10 Mr. Farah has been living in a house located at 37 via Latino Silvio since 2005. At the time of the submission of the communication, he was living in the house with his 73-year-old mother, who has disabilities, his older brother, who had recently undergone heart surgery, his wife and his two children then aged 8 and 5 years. Mr. Farah has been working as a fishmonger in a market in Rome for the past 13 years. Even though his mother requested a pension, and his wife is the formal title holder of the market stall at which he works, at the time of the submission of the communication, he was the only person in the family with an income. His brother had previously sold shoes at markets but had lost his economic activity after being hospitalized and undergoing heart surgery. The economic indicator of the family unit is €2,350 per year. 2.11 Despite the requests for emergency housing filed on 16 February 2021 (see para. 2.6 above), neither the authorities nor the railway company offered any solution. The only alternative that the authorities offered was to separate the men from the women and children, with the women and children being housed in emergency centres and the men remaining homeless, which they did not consider to be a viable option. Mr. Farah cannot seek shelter at the home of any relatives or friends and fears that an eviction and the resulting homelessness would render him unable to provide proper parental care to his children. He adds that an eviction would cause irreparable damage to the whole family, putting the life of his mother and the health of his brother at risk and creating trauma for the children, whose enjoyment of the basic rights to housing, health, schooling and parental care would be disrupted. Complaint 3.1 The authors allege that the Italian authorities are not protecting their rights under article 11 of the Covenant and contend that the situation of defencelessness in which they find themselves is a violation of their rights enshrined in the Covenant. They note that the national courts ruled in favour of a claim by the railway company to regain control of a property that it had neglected for many years instead of guaranteeing the right to housing, integrity and dignity to socially vulnerable families. GE.24-03814 3