The Roma Residence is a group of buildings, located in Via di Bravetta 451, at 10 minutes distance from the Vatican. Each building  is composed by hundreds of  bed-sitters.
The  owner is Massimo Mezzaroma, a big building contractor).
In agreement with the  town council, the complex has been used for the lodging assistance. During the years these buildings have been lived in by thousands persons, with the costs  charged on the municipality, who  have  rights  to lodging assistance  and others with rents directly with the building constructor.
Back in 1983 the municipality was paying 4 millions lire, monthly, for each of the bed-sitters occupied by the persons having rights to lodging assistance  and from then on has continued to pay exorbitant amounts, approximately till March 2006 when the Roma Residence was due to be  shut down  for change of  usage destination and consequent revaluation of the area.

During the past 23 years every time that  a house was found for the Italian families that needed lodging assistance, the bed-sitter has  been often  rented to immigrants from various ethnic groups) and often in accordance with their relevant embassies, at exorbitant prices and, as it can be imagined, never openly.
Since several years the inefficiencies inside the Residence have reached extremely high  levels, indecent not only for human beings but also for the animals. The shocking levels  of dirtiness make it a  dump in  open air, with the sewers that discharge directly into the areas earlier used as garages, with rubbish everywhere, several colonies  of rats, with no  lifts, without hot water  and, sometimes, without electric power. Childs and elderly persons  in particular are getting ill and, for all the residents, there is the threat to be put on the street  without any advance notice.
Residence Roma, its history  with  the private and public persons related to it, is the highest symbol  of the  lodging deterioration  and of the moral and institutional decay in Rome, a  business on the shoulder of  poor people and on the shoulders of each single taxpayer; and the story, unfortunately, seems destined to repeat itself.