House plan, broad meshes on habitability: Salvini launches encore measures

Smaller minimum areas (from 28 to 20 metres for one person and from 38 to 28 metres for two), as well as minimum heights (from 2.70 and 2.40). More generous tolerances also for the future, so not only until 24 May. Simplified amnesty for pre-1977 variants. And stop to disputes of non-conformity for buildings declared fit for habitation by the municipalities. Without forgetting Save Milan. These are the main themes of the amendments that the Lega Lega group will present to the Save Home decree (Dl 69/2024), to be debated from 11 June in the Environment Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, and that on 4 June Matteo Salvini, in the dual role of minister and leader of the Carroccio, presented during a press conference in Montecitorio (video).

"If Parliament has to fight or filibuster, I hope it will do so on other measures, not on the Italians' house,' Salvini said. I prepare for everything, but I hope that an agreement will already be reached in the Commission. The reference is first of all to the measure on the so-called salva-Milano, the regulation that should sanction hundreds of large-scale building projects carried out with slimmer procedures than those allowed and on which the spotlight of the judiciary has been turned on for some time now.

But Salvini's idea is of a great Italian Home Plan, as he has christened it: a residential and social housing programme entrusted to his ministry 'to provide concrete answers to housing hardship' through 'new models of public-private cooperation that allow the involvement of the main operators in the credit market with a social vocation'. For now, according to the holder of Porta Pia, work is underway on 100,000 new social housing properties, between Pinqua (National Innovative Programme for Housing Quality) and other financial levers. But the tightest target is the Salva-casa bis: the enlargement of the perimeter by parliamentary means of the sanatoria just passed in the Council of Ministers, landed in the Gazzetta and in force since 30 May. Barely born and already a candidate for more incisive reform, in short.

The most radical choice is related to habitability, on which the minister calls for 'an acknowledgement of the existing reality'. The criteria currently used are part of a health decree, dated 1975. They will have to be reviewed and cut, bearing in mind the evolution of technology and our cities.

The other long-awaited novelty concerns the conformity of buildings. Those who have obtained a certificate of habitability from the municipality will not be able to receive complaints about any non-conformity. It is a rule that safeguards citizens' legitimate expectations, extending what was already provided for by the Salva Casa law on the subject of legitimate status. And it goes hand in hand with the amnesty for pre-1977 variants, which will be simpler under the League's proposals: the reason is that, before the Bucalossi law, variants during construction could not be regularised and, now, they deserve a fast track.