ROME, Aug.30 (Xinhua) -- Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi said Wednesday that the city's housing priority should be for local residents who need their home, implying that the shelter policy for migrants should be considered after the local people.
According to the Ansa news agency, Raggi made the remarks after a meeting on evictions and the city's housing crisis. "The positon of the city council is very clear, we must give priority in the housing emergency to those who have been waiting for a home for decades".
Local police last week evicted hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers from a building near central railway station of Rome. The refugees, mostly Eritrean, had been squatting in the building for years.
After the eviction, the migrants clashed with the police when they were cleared out of a nearby square, where they had camped for four days.
According to Ansa, aid agencies and leftwing politicians said the migrants should not have been evicted, and subsequently moved on, without alternative lodging being provided.
Local media said the migrants reportedly refused lodgings outside Rome because it would have meant moving their children out of schools and being split up.
The Rome authorities have said they will properties seized from the mafia available to evicted squatters. Italians on housing lists for years regularly claim migrants are being jumped past them, local media said.
