One hundred thousand new housing units in 10 years in Italia: all the novelties of the Piano casa

ROME - After work, home. Giorgia Meloni returns to a press conference after the Council of Ministers for the second time in three days. An event more unique than rare. She does so to announce in person a "10 billion euro" housing plan based on three pillars - public housing, social housing, private investment - and a goal: to make more than 100,000 homes available in ten years. This is the government's response to what it defines as "one of the most heartfelt priorities of Italians, namely the possibility of access to quality housing at affordable prices" and which it had promised to address from the stage of the Comunione e Liberazione meeting last August. "Housing is a primary good," he punctuated, recalling the price increases on the housing market and rattling off the percentages of the mortgage stress index, which measures the ratio between net salary and costs incurred for the mortgage or rent. An index that has 'significantly exceeded the guard level of 33% in all major cities, from Milan, where it is over 47%, to Rome close to 36%'.

Lombardy and the capital,' he adds, 'are among the European cities where it is most difficult for a young person to buy property. And 'the problem of access to housing concerns an unfortunately significant segment of the population, larger than what we know as the most fragile and vulnerable part'. The reference is to the "grey zone" "made up of a large number of Italians who pay taxes, study and work": too well-off to access the social housing rankings and too few to meet the demands of the housing market.

This is the starting point for the package put together by the executive, with a choral effort witnessed by the presence, alongside Meloni and her chief of staff Gaetano Caputi, of Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Infrastructure Matteo Salvini, European Affairs Minister Tommaso Foti, and, in liaison, the president of the Conference of Regions, Massimiliano Fedriga, and the number one of the ANCI, Naples Mayor Gaetano Manfredi. The political message of the operation, which gives substance to 'phase 2' after the defeat in the referendum, is clear: celebrate 1 May with a double concrete signal on issues strongly felt by citizens and demonstrate that 'the government has what it takes to overcome the crisis'.

A decree-law on the housing plan in the strict sense and a decree-law on evictions: these are the trains on which the news is travelling. The first of the three pillars of the plan looks at public and subsidised housing, with heavy intervention on Erp. Here Salvini promises record times: 'Within a year, we will recover 60,000 council houses, 60,000 flats that have not yet been assigned because they are not up to standard, because they are occupied illegally, because they do not have windows, because the installations need to be rebuilt. We will do this in all the Italian regions. In Lombardy it will be 17 thousand". The Mit 'has made about 5 billion available,' says Salvini. The ad hoc fund will start immediately with 1.7 billion and will be expanded at a later date to include resources for urban regeneration. The entire package of around 6 billion will be managed by Invitalia and will also cover social housing recovery projects. This is also where 'rent to buy', the final redemption of the rented property, comes into play, so that 'you no longer have to pay rent for nothing but can redeem the house'.

The model is borrowed from the one introduced by the Ministry of Universities led by Anna Maria Bernini to meet the NRP's targets on university student accommodation: a commissioner and drastic simplifications. But on this point, and on the role of the superintendencies effectively cancelled in the start-up phase of the renovation work, there was a bitter clash in the Cdm between Salvini himself and the Minister of Culture, Alessandro Giuli, who threatened not to vote for the measure, brandishing Article 9 of the Constitution on the protection of historical and artistic heritage as a weapon. 'But we have to intervene in Quarto Oggiaro...', Salvini's outburst. Only Meloni's mediation ('Enough snobbery,' she intimated) and a technical meeting close to the Council of Ministers allowed the tempers to calm down.