53,000 public buildings are also included in the House Plan

The photograph that arrives from the Ministry of the Economy is destined to weigh in the Home Plan's yard. It is a survey based on provisional data as at 31 December 2022 but updated to 2025 of the public residential property stock not in use: 53,241 units currently unused, for a total of over 9.4 million square metres. A large basin, scattered throughout the territory, which becomes the potential lever for expanding the housing supply quickly thanks to the tools of the new Plan launched by the Meloni government last Thursday. Instruments among which the census and the possible reconversion of these properties also stand out. The first frame of this picture is that of the quality of the properties: of these 53,000, about 44,000 could return to the market with soft maintenance work, while another 9,000 require more substantial restoration work. The figure speaks for itself: a significant part of the heritage is technically recoverable in a relatively short time, with moderate costs. "From the earliest stages of processing these data, our work at the Ministry of the Economy has been guided by a clear vision: the home is not just an economic asset, but the fundamental pillar of social stability and the indispensable prerequisite for the relaunch of our nation," explained undersecretary Lucia Albano. "With the Piano Casa," she added, "the government intends to attract resources from institutional and private investors, assigning a decisive role to public real estate, for the construction of social and affordable housing.

According to the map that Il Sole24Ore can anticipate, there is a strong concentration in certain areas. Leading the way is Campania, with more than 12,000 units and almost 1.7 million square metres, followed by Lombardy with 6,523 units and more than one million square metres available. This is followed by Sicily (4,424 for 823,776 square metres), while Lazio stands at 3,261 properties for over 632 thousand square metres. Significant numbers also in Piedmont (3,595 units equal to 605,215 square metres) and Emilia-Romagna (3,236 and 554 thousand square metres). These are properties in the possession of municipalities, regions, provinces and metropolitan cities, but also ministries and public bodies.

The buildings are dilapidated, in a state of disrepair or in any case unusable due to years of lack of maintenance: but they also represent the ideal sample on which the Housing Plan could intervene with its logic, reiterated by Prime Minister Meloni at the press conference, "without land consumption". It is an unused stock that schematically falls within the second pillar, that destined for social housing, even if the dossier does not exclude other uses, hypothesising that "they could be destined for public housing, social housing and integrated housing", as the Mef analysis explains.

In large cities, the stock of unused properties is concentrated in the South. In the 15 metropolitan cities there are about 13,000 units suitable for residential use, with an average size compatible with two- to four-person households. Naples alone comes close to 7,000 units, followed by Palermo (1,197) and Rome (1,709). Milan stops at 650, Genoa at 748. Overwhelmed by years of housing emergency, the most populous territories are also those where recovery can have the most immediate effects.

The framework is the 10 billion programme devised by the government, based on three pillars: the recovery of existing public housing, the development of social housing at moderate rents and the activation of private capital. A scheme that brings together public resources and financial leverage, with the aim of rapidly increasing the available supply. Within this scheme, the Mef's map becomes an operational piece. A specific passage of the Home Plan, in this framework, recalls precisely the need to map the public assets that can be reconverted. A job to be finished but which, to a large extent, already exists.