Spin Time: Protecting People’s Health and Safeguarding a Community of Which Rome Should Be Proud

For several days, hundreds of people living at Spin Time have been forced to live and sleep on the street and on the pavement outside the building on Via Santa Croce in Gerusalemme following the seizing of the property.

Among them are more than a hundred children, older adults, pregnant women, persons with disabilities, individuals living with chronic illnesses, and patients undergoing complex medical treatments.

As a medical humanitarian organisation, Doctors for Human Rights Italy (MEDU) expresses its profound concern regarding the physical and psychological consequences of prolonged exposure to street conditions, particularly during a period marked by extremely high temperatures.

For many years, through its Mobile Clinic, MEDU has operated in the contexts of greatest social vulnerability and marginalisation across the city of Rome. We therefore have had direct experiences with the impact that the lack of safe housing, exposure to the elements, and disruption of healthcare and support networks can have on people’s health.

Prolonged exposure to high temperatures and the conditions of living on the street place residents at increased risk of dehydration, heatstroke, infectious diseases, and the worsening of chronic medical conditions. Although emergency sanitation facilities and water distribution points have been established, these measures cannot, particularly over time, ensure adequate conditions of protection, hygiene, rest, and continuity of care. The risks are especially severe for children, older adults, pregnant women, and individuals living with cardiovascular, renal, or respiratory diseases.

The psychological consequences are equally significant. The sudden displacement from one’s home, together with the loss of personal documents, medications, and belongings, generates fear, disorientation, and a profound sense of insecurity. These circumstances carry a substantial risk of exacerbating pre-existing mental health conditions and have a particularly destabilising impact on children.

MEDU speaks about Spin Time with first-hand knowledge, having maintained a direct and continuous relationship with this community for many years.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, for approximately one year, our physicians, healthcare workers, and volunteers worked within the building, collaborating closely with the community on prevention, health monitoring, and the provision of medical care. In the years that followed, Spin Time also hosted numerous public, cultural, and community initiatives organised by MEDU.

We therefore know not only the vulnerabilities of this community, but also its extraordinary capacity for organisation, solidarity, and inclusion.

From a social, cultural, and human perspective, Spin Time represents a valuable asset for the city of Rome. It is a community in which more than four hundred people from different countries, cultures, and life experiences live together; a space capable of providing housing, social relationships, participation, and mutual support; a reality of which the city should be proud.

From the earliest hours of this emergency, MEDU’s physicians and volunteers mobilised in support of the healthcare assistance point that was spontaneously established outside the building. MEDU is now present with its Mobile Clinic to contribute to the provision of healthcare and to work alongside healthcare professionals, volunteers, and civil society organisations engaged on site.

This mobilisation is essential, but it cannot replace an adequate and lasting institutional response.

We therefore call upon the competent authorities to:

* immediately guarantee adequate and continuous healthcare, psychological, and social assistance for all those forced to live outside the building;
* ensure particular protection for children, older adults, pregnant women, persons with disabilities, oncology patients, and individuals living with chronic illnesses;
* guarantee uninterrupted access to medications, medical care, sanitation facilities, clean water, and dignified conditions for rest;
* allow residents to return to their homes as soon as the necessary safety conditions have been verified;
* directly involve the Spin Time community in all decisions concerning its future;
* make every possible effort to ensure that this social, cultural, and housing experience can continue to exist without being dismantled or erased.

The necessary judicial and safety assessments must not result in the abandonment of hundreds of people on the street or in the dismantling of a community that has represented a valuable resource for Rome for more than ten years. In circumstances such as these, justice cannot be reduced to the mere formal observance of procedures; it must also be measured by the consequences its decisions have on people’s lives, health, and dignity.

We call for the immediate protection of the health of Spin Time’s residents and urge that every possible effort be made to ensure that Spin Time can continue to exist as a model of coexistence, inclusion, and culture in the city of Rome.