Housing plan, from social housing to real estate funds: how 100,000 homes will be built

It will arrive on the first of May, on a symbolic date, the Meloni government's Housing Plan. After the announcements made in the summer at the Rimini Meeting and a few postponements over the course of the year, the programme that is to lead to the construction of 100 thousand housing units over ten years is finally preparing to see the light of day. It will revolve around a single decree that will contain interventions on popular housing and social housing. Here are the elements known so far:

The Budget Law has brought the resources already allocated in previous manoeuvres into a unified framework, quantifying the resources immediately available for the plan at 970 million euro. Other funds will be added to this: at the moment, the count according to the government would come to 6 billion, which could even increase further and exceed the figure of 8 billion. In this regard, it must be remembered that a few weeks ago, in the mid-term review of cohesion policy, 1.1 billion was earmarked precisely forsustainable housing.

The most defined chapter concerns the population houses. Here the focus is on extensive maintenance work. There are approximately63,000 dwellings in need of renovation, because they are currently unfit for habitation. At the moment, however, there are various funding lines pointing in the same direction, especially at the regional level, anticipating what the government intends to do: the real need, then, could be around 50-55 thousand dwellings to be upgraded. The average cost of a renovation is currently around 18,500 euro. Rounding up to 20,000 euro, it is estimated that the measure will have to cost around 1.1 billion euro, in order to complete the work and assign these properties to as many families on the waiting list. For these interventions there will be a financial instrument that will make available reimbursable resources.

The timescale of this operation may not be very long. The works, although they concern thousands of buildings, are in most cases small extraordinary maintenance operations (above all, adjustment of the plant engineering part) for which a few months are needed. Many former Iacp may be able to move within the framework of the maintenance framework agreements that they have already contracted out, cutting the time it takes to entrust interventions. In other cases, it will be necessary to entrust companies with new maintenance lots: some public housing companies are already moving in this direction. The renovations, however, will be concentrated mainly in the North, where there are more uninhabitable buildings.

Compared to the government's initial assumptions, there will no longer be separate measures, but a single intervention that will also contain other elements, in addition to the maintenance of social housing. In addition to social housing, a second line of interventions will be combined: they concern social housing. These are low-cost housing or student residences, which therefore do not access the private market. They will be realised through the redevelopment of public buildings. The financing model, however, will be different from the maintenance of social housing: not only non-repayable contributions but alsosubsidised financing.