Housing Plan: one billion euros from the NRRP for workers’ homes

Piece by piece, the mosaic of the Housing Plan is taking shape. And the various projects that make up the housing programme developed by the Meloni government. One billion euros will go to service housing, accommodation available to an army of workers who are currently facing a genuine mobility crisis due to excessively high rents in the cities that are most attractive from an  employment perspective. The funds coming from the latest revision of the PNRR (see ‘Il Sole 24 Ore’ of 4 June) will thus be used: originally earmarked for Rosco, the public company tasked with purchasing and then leasing the trains, will instead be used, according to the Ministry of Infrastructure’s plans, for one of the most strategic pillars of the Housing Plan, the one dedicated to workers living away from home.

The details are currently being finalised and will be incorporated into an amendment to be included in the conversion bill for Decree 66/2026, which is currently being debated in the Chamber of Deputies’ Environment Committee: the proposed amendments were presented yesterday. Voting is expected to begin next week, although the rapporteurs (Dario Iaia, Fdi, Erica Mazzetti, Fi, and Elisa Montemagni, Lega) are awaiting the Government’s views. So, for this week, things are at a standstill. Next week, however, we will need to work flat out to meet the target of conversion by 8 July.

The vehicle for the operation is expected, however, to be the National Housing Fund (FNA), a real estate investment trust dedicated to affordable housing, managed by CDP Real Asset SGR. This is a fund with specific characteristics, as it is backed by the InvestEU guarantee, which covers part of the risk, and because it has been classified as a ‘Member State compartment’, meaning it is eligible to receive resources from the NRRP. Around 1.2 billion is coming from the ROSCO funds, which fall under the remit of the MIT: 200 million will be used for the PNRR programme dedicated to the energy efficiency of social housing. Given the excess of applications recorded in recent months, it will be the recipient of a new stream of resources. The remainder (namely, one billion) will go towards a specific sector of the FNA, dedicated to workers’ housing.

It was precisely the developments in the Housing Plan and its link to the world of work that Antonino Turicchi, CEO of CDP’s asset management company and a key figure in this programme, spoke about yesterday: ‘A new area of vulnerability is emerging: that of the middle class. Young professionals in their first jobs and entire categories of workers – nurses, teachers, law enforcement officers – play an essential role in the functioning of our cities, but often cannot afford to live there. This is not just a matter of social deprivation, but a question of the country’s competitiveness’. The answer to these needs lies in affordable housing, ‘housing with rents lower than market rates but higher than so-called social housing’, he added. A solution particularly suited to service housing projects, designed to support labour mobility, which we are seeking to support through the National Housing Fund'.

To date, through its funds, Cdp Real Asset has already contributed to the construction of over 12,000 social housing units as part of an overall programme comprising 19,000 flats at controlled prices. Giorgio Spaziani Testa, president of Confedilizia, also spoke yesterday about the Housing Plan. He emphasised that widespread private ownership ‘represents one of the distinctive features of our country’ and that it ‘continues to provide the bulk of the housing supply’. To support this, the role of the draft law on the release of properties (currently under discussion in the Senate) will be essential, as it provides for ‘greater protections for owners’. That bill, however, must be accompanied by ‘tax relief for rentals (primarily on IMU) and support for the most vulnerable tenants’.