Milan: Finding room for the homeless

Built last spring, this housing project in Milan, Italy, was originally set up for private families who could afford to pay the rents in this rather well-to-do part of the city. But just before construction of the block of apartments was completed, the Italian Communist Party moved 1500 homeless people from as far south as Calabria and Sicily into the building.

There was very little the private owners could do to protest the action--the police would have had a hard time evicting 1500 people who had nowhere to go, and the party controls the Milan City Council anyway. So the squatters are still living in the not-quite-finished building, and the party is compensating the intended owners.

Johnnie Walker took these photographs early this summer, a few months after the occupation.