Homeless in Rome

I am worried that I may be homeless soon. You may recall that I mentioned here that bel ragazzo and I were going to live in the home of the Cesaroni - in Garbatella.

Well that was then and this is now. After much negotiation we finally reached an agreement, settled a price and started the paper work. Now I am told we are still waiting for the owner who seems to have some issues with the fact that the contract is in the name of my area manager however he will not live there and that it is a company, and not an individual who pays the (expensive) rent.

The agent and my supervisor are trying to tell this owner that no one other then a company could afford to live here as it is so expensive! That is why his silly old apartment has been free for so long! So really it is in his benefit for a company to pay the rent as the company has a lot more money then one single person. Does he not realise that Rome is in a little bit of a pickle accommodation wise at the moment?

The owner was also trying to pull one over by asking that we sign HIS contract rather then the agents contract. Luckily bel ragazzo is a born and bred Italian as Italian legal jargon goes right over my head and my supervisor pretends to speak Italian but in all honestly does not speak one word so had no clue what the contract said. Bel ragazzo read the owners contract and saw he had written these little clauses saying that if something goes wrong - we NOT he would pay for it. Che furbo...

Basically my non-Italian speaking supervisor pretended he had read the contract and told the agent that if the owner will not sign the agency contract this afternoon then we want nothing more to do with him or his Garbatella apartment.

So...who knows where we will end up. Perhaps you will see two new 'homeless' people hanging around the termini station soon (with an office in tow.) If you see one girl and one boy surrounded by 200 boxes and a lap top, please come and say hello.