Housing Plan: tight deadlines for social housing, with allocation to take place before the end of the building works

The Housing Plan is entering its operational phase with the programme for the refurbishment and maintenance of public and social housing stock, aimed at restoring around 60,000 social housing units that are currently unallocable. This is the first of the three pillars on which the Meloni government’s Housing Plan is based.

The call for proposals is expected to be published by the end of the month, slightly later than originally planned, when it was due to be ready by the end of September. The ball is currently in Invitalia’s court, which manages the funds in accordance with the agreement with the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport and oversees the procedures for selecting projects through public notices. Invitalia will give the go-ahead in the coming days. The call for proposals concerns the first emergency pillar worth 700 million (the second tranche will likely be the subject of a second call for proposals) for the refurbishment of social housing. It should be noted that the initial budget allocated for the programme is €970 million for the period 2026–2030. The first homes are expected as early as spring – an ambitious plan.

The special commissioner Felice Squitieri recently stated that he had completed an initial survey of properties in the area. “We will focus first and foremost on the existing housing stock, on those homes that are currently neither occupied nor allocated because they have been neglected,” he said during the SAIE exhibition. The discussions at the SAIE revealed an incredible degree of consensus, not only on political and technical grounds but, above all, on financial ones: local authorities and regions are also deploying their own resources, alongside those from central government and the EU.”

The aim is to take action on the existing housing stock – specifically those properties that are currently neither occupied nor allocated because they have not been maintained.

Squitieri also highlighted the new allocation procedure, which provides for the following as early as the final stage renovation of the properties, the successful applicant is identified so that they can take possession of the property immediately, thereby avoiding incidents of squatting which are by no means uncommon in Italia. Although the commissioner himself emphasised that ‘bureaucracy risks slowing us down, but the role of the Commissioner is precisely to speed things up: we have carried out in three months work that would normally have taken years, and now it is up to the local authorities – municipalities, regions, ATER and ALER – who are already organising themselves to get started’.