Rome, Italy – Loredana Longo has little time for Italy’s September 25 election. What is dominating her thoughts instead is how she will be able to pay her sky-high gas bills in the coming winter months. “The situation is catastrophic,” she said.
A teacher at a nursery school in Ciampino, on the outskirts of Rome, Longo makes 1,000 euros ($990) a month. With more than half of her salary going to a mortgage, the 48-year-old single mother of a teenage son has long struggled to make ends meet – but was always able to get by.
