From an Italian newspaper:
http://ilrestodelcarlino.ilsole24ore.com/pesaro/2009/05/04/172368-auto_tetto_vita_stenti.shtml
Translation:
He is on a wheelchair. A year and a half ago multiple stenosis has doomed him to no longer walking. She is unemployed. It’s four years they live together and often in the past they have slept in a car because they have nothing but loose change for food. Their names are Danilo Tufariello and Alessia Pezzetti, both 36 years old (…)
Now they live in Gabicce , in an apartment hotel paid in part by a relative, but for four months they slept in a car. Both come from ended marriages, and don’t know where this life in common will take them. Because they feel alone, rejected, almost hated. They have nothing to be ashamed about, yet very few stop by to offer help. The Gabicce municipality is helping them with some money for meals, she works occasionally as a caretaker, while he can’t work.
Danilo used to be a manager in some of the best restaurants and hotels of the “Riviera”. Then he got sick, and had to exit that world’s scene, with the abyss of poverty opening before him. “I’ve got no money, no pension, I’ve not the strength to look at the future – says Danilo – and I feel like crying if I think that I can’t even talk with my children because I and their mother split on very bad terms”.
Why were you denied a disability pension?
I was examined by a medical commission that found me disabled, with the possibility to be acknowledged a 100% disability. The next commission acknowledged only a 73% disability. With 75% I would have had the right to get 250 euros per month. I’ve appealed but times are very long.
Why did the commission not believe you completely?
They said my illness has a fidgety origin, as if it could go away at any moment. But I’ve got documents that state otherwise. It seems almost as if I enjoy living as a dropout after having had for many years a job I loved and that paid well. I would have given up all of that to end up on a wheelchair and sleep in a car because my parents, being Jehovah’s Witnesses, don’t welcome Alessia in their house because she’s divorced . And even looking for a house for rent is hard: when they see me in a wheelchair they say the flat is not suitable. Why there’s no room for me and my mate in the place I grew up and would like to keep living?
Behemot