Repairs to shared roof

Learning By Error Image
05/13/2009 - 11:25

I'd be grateful for advice - or better still, other's experience - on the question of repairs to a common roof.An expatriate neighbour of mine suffered quite a bit of damage in the recent L'aquila earthquake. Their house is directly above a local person's house, and that lower house was undamaged. The expat doesn't have residency in Italy.Following media commentary here in Abruzzo, I don't see my (expat) neighbour getting any public assistance towards the repair of the house, (or if they do, they are likely to be at the end of the queue), simply due to their not having residency here.The downstairs neighbour may be eligible for public assistance, as it is his place of residence. But, his home hasn't been damaged, although the walls at the top of the building (the expat's property) seem to be bulging out, and hence need some work, including the seismic "collar".The neighbour downstairs is anxious about the building having an earthquake collar fitted to the top of the walls. He's quite willing to try to use his eligibility for public assistance to try to help fund the seismic protection work, but does not want that work to be dependent upon whether it gets public help or not.My question to Forum members would be whether any of them have had experience of similar situations, and how they were able to overcome it?Sorry if this is rather convoluted, but its probably not a unique issue in the area affected by the earthquake....thanks.

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there was a report i think in il centro... regarding people with second homes in the L'aquila area... whats is important is that the house is in one of the designated primary damaged comunes... the list used to be 49 or so but that might have changed... in that area even second home owners will be entitled to a sum of 80,000 if there home has suffered considerable damage and lesser sums assigned depending on each case... the first step even if you are not in the primary area is to get your friend or his neighbour to report the damage to the comune and have a technician visit and asses damage and register it ... in that case whatever is done will then have a record of damage and the government is giving people the option to use there own contractors ... so its not a question of waiting fro the comune to do the work... sorry its not a clear reply... the other point that might make the neighbour a bit worried is that if they say the place is too unstable ...he might not be allowed back in the house...the comune could stick a prohibition notice on it...anyway il centro has a good search system online... maybe try and find the article i read that way...as trying to wade through all the earthquake news would be a bit muchthe other thing is i posted something the other day on the other place...its to do with public administration help...http://www.lineaamica.it/its a new site...well to me anyway but it will be worth a look as its covering earthquake issues too...as for responsibilities over roofs this is often shared out on a divided property... but that would have to be answered after reading the property details... ie the final act and if that contains any conditions about shared responsibility for the roof and or maintenance of the buildingsorry not a clear reply ... but maybe a place to start looking