Italy house plan delayed, implementation still far off

The Italian Housing Plan is delayed and it will still take time before it really becomes fully operative. This is the message that emerged from the meeting held yesterday in the Parlamentino of the Ministry of Infrastructure, where Deputy Prime Minister and Minister Matteo Salvini convened the main housing associations. On the table, in addition to the programme to combat housing hardship, was also the reform of the Single Text for Construction.

As for the first front, Salvini announced the availability of 660 million to kick off the pilot projects, resources already allocated but distributed over a multi-year horizon: 100 million in the 2024 Budget law (50 in 2027 and 50 in 2028) and another 560 million in the latest manoeuvre, with 150 million planned for 2028, 180 for 2029 and 230 for 2030. The manoeuvre also envisaged a Dpcm, at the proposal of the MIT, within 180 days of the entry into force of the Budget Law, 'after agreement in the Unified Conference'. And therefore within 30 June a decree should be issued with the contents of the plan that Salvini anticipated yesterday, still only in general outline, to the representatives of the associations. A further provision of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, in agreement with the Ministry of the Economy, should then proceed to allocate the resources.

While waiting to make the Plan walk on more concrete regulatory legs, MIT illustrated yesterday the general framework of the intervention, which rests on some strategic lines. Among these, as a note from Porta Pia states, is the reorganisation of the social housing and of the housing companies; the promotion of innovative models for the financing of social housing projects, based on the integration of public and private resources (public-private partnership); the creation of flexible housing solutions, based on the mixture of residential and social housing, and integrated into the city; the definition of social housing building models suitable to provide an answer to the management of social needs also by the Third Sector.

In the strategy illustrated to stakeholders through a series of slides, Salvini also listed sources of financing, the true nerve centre of the grounding of actions for "affordable" housing. These include the use of European funds such as Invest Eu, but also EIB funding, the development of a revolving sustainable housing fund and the creation of a new fund set up at the ministry to take in, MEF permitting, a number of unused resources in Italy and Europe, such as, for example, Pnrr funds advanced by non-targeted projects. Real estate funds, foundations andPension funds will also be involved. New home companies will have to be granted greater managerial and managerial autonomy to enable them to be more attractive for investment.

It will be necessary, then, to focus on the monitoring of housing hardship, identifying the different needs 'identified according to the reason and severity of the hardship'. The role of the Regions and local authorities will be central in this context. The national strategy will have to integrate with the experiences born on the territory. In fact, housing hardship conditions vary significantly from region to region, both in terms of the nature of the problem and its extent. This is why the solutions identified at territorial level must be recognised and integrated into a flexible strategy.