Homelessness, registration in the registry office if there is a home address

The municipality may not delete a lack of fixed abode resident in Italy from the population register if he has indicated as his "domicile",a "address" to receive correspondence and communications. Nor can it place him at afictitious address, a factually non-existent "non-place", if on the basis of the findings, a non-precarious relationship, regardless of temporariness, between the applicant and the place chosen by him is demonstrated. The Cassazione, in ruling 32294, rejected a municipality's appeal and decided a case, despite the verified tardiness of the appeal. It does so considering "that the issue is of particular importance and makes it necessary to state the principle of law ex officio in the interest of the law".

The judges branded as inadmissible the appeal by the municipality, which had cancelled a citizen from the registry office in order to fix his home at "via dell'angelo custode 63", a non-existent address chosen for the homeless, despite the fact that the man had given as his address - a notion that can be included in domicile - the street where the family home was inhabited by his ex-girlfriend who, although no longer wishing to live with him, had said she was available to receive correspondence and other information.

For the municipality, this 'time' openness of the woman was not enough, nor was it sufficient for the man to have the centre of his affections in the village, because there were family members there.

The Court of Cassation reminds the municipality that 'even for the homeless persons the registration and the qualified territorial connection that follows is a prerequisite for self-identification,' reads the judgment, 'also and above all through the development of a sense of belonging with the local community. A sense of belonging that is useful 'for the insertion of the individual in the society within which he can have full and free development of his personality, as recognised by Article 2 of the Constitution'.

The judges of legitimacy emphasise that homeless persons can belong to different categories and, often, due to unfavourable life events they are people who find themselves in conditions ofextreme poverty and severe social marginality. "Conditions that can lead to the simultaneous presence of multiple needs and problems, affecting the entire sphere of the person and his or her family and social relations. This is why the homeless,' reads the decision, 'are the recipients of specific services: from prompt accommodation to social-health interventions, from services for accompaniment to those for social reintegration'.