"I don't rent my apartment to Africans": this was the email a 24-year-old Italian woman who was born in Modena to Moroccan migrant parents received while looking for an apartment to rent in Reggio Emilia.

"I've become indifferent to jokes and comments, but this made me think," said Mouna Bour in a post published on Instagram.

The young woman has been looking for a rental in Reggio Emilia for the past three months to be closer to the architecture firm where she works in Cadelbosco, near the city. She shared on her profile the message she received from the owner of an apartment in downtown Reggio after she had made enquiries.

'Many foreigners or southern Italians have the same problem'

After writing in the email all the information on the three-month security deposit, the monthly rent of €600 and the usual recommendation on cleanliness and regular payments, Bour said the owner wrote that she doesn't "rent my apartment to Africans".

The young designer stressed that many of her colleagues share the same problem: in Reggio Emilia, as well as in many other northern cities, people of foreign origin or from southern Italy have a harder time finding an apartment, even if they have a steady job," she noted.

"I have been looking for a home for the past three months to try and get closer to work, but I haven't found anything despite the fact that I have an open-ended contract," she told the local newspaper Gazzetta di Modena.

"I would like to feel at home, because this is where I was born and grew up, rather than feel discriminated. I am part of a second generation, but there will be third, fourth and fifth generations," she added.

'All this is shocking, also because I was born in Italy'

After publishing her post on Instagram, Mouna Bour said she received several messages from people who told her that they had experienced similar episodes of discrimination, although generally not as explicit.

For example, some reported that the owner of an apartment they wanted to rent had suddenly pulled back after hearing a foreign name (in particular in Reggio Emilia, where one resident in five is of foreign origin) even if the aspiring tenant was born and grew up in Italy."

An Albanian colleague lived for a year in a hotel because nobody in Reggio Emilia wanted to rent him an apartment, while a friend in Milan was repeatedly told by owners that they don't 'rent to foreigners,'" said Mouna.

"I find all of this shocking, also because I was born in Italy, all my family members are citizens, my parents came here together when they were in their 20s", she concluded.