From opera to bread line: Italy's surge in the ‘new poor’

ROME: Within 10 minutes, all the food was gone.

For years, the Ronda della Solidarieta (Solidarity Patrol) charity has served up free dinners twice a week for Rome's needy, passed out at twilight in the shadow of the city's ancient ruins. But as Italy begins to feel the effects of its most punishing economic crisis since World War II, triggered by the Coronavirus pandemic, the number of those in need has shot up.

On one recent evening, a large crowd pressed forward for the 130 bags of food handed out by volunteers, watched over by Red Cross workers.

An undercurrent of desperation hung in the air despite the setting sun and idyllic backdrop, and some people left disappointed, arriving too late for a bag of their own.

Among the crowd were new faces unaccustomed to asking for help. One, who gave her name as Anna, said she had travelled across town for the food.

Unable to work as a cleaner during Italy's two-month lockdown, she has skimped on meals to pay rent on her shared apartment.

"I come here from time to time now when it's hard," she said in a barely audible voice. "I'm ashamed about it, though."

Anna is just one among a new class of poor that has developed seemingly overnight in a country that, even before the epidemic struck in late February, was struggling with a sickly economy, over nine-percent unemployment and vast inequality. Another one million people will now require food assistance, bringing the total number to 3.7 million Italians, the main agricultural lobby Coldiretti estimated last month, calling them Italy's "new poor". - Double punishment The problem is global. Earlier this month, the charity Oxfam estimated that half a billion people around the world could be driven into poverty by the virus crisis. Elsewhere in Europe, Spain plans to roll out a basic income to combat new poverty, while in Britain, nearly one million people -10 times the average -- applied during two weeks of April for the government's main form of state aid.