Abstract
This chapter summarises the housing issue in Italy, its peculiar characters are explained through the timeline from 1900 to today. Reconstructing the Italian frame shows several phases dependent from the national government’s decisions, often controversial from one political coalition to another. The definition of social housing in Italy changed during the time, from a welfare perspective to the current neo-liberal one. The spatial tools and housing forms also changed according to the policies triggering them. The territorial dimension is also relevant in this definition of the context, especially considering the socio-economic divide between North and South of Italy. Today the Italian social housing definition became “blurry” in a mix of public and private practices, proposing either rental housing or home ownership, using complex financial tools.
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Notes
- 1.
The different areas of interest are established by Legislative Decree 122/1998.
- 2.
The State also decided to give a contribution (Law 408/1949) to the mortgage interests of the population with different housing needs.
- 3.
For instance, the growth of home ownership rate was also considered as stabilising factor in the political and social scenario.
- 4.
The programme was extended in 1955 with Law 1148.
- 5.
Also this law was modified by the housing reform: the local plans for social housing could not identify areas for more than 60 % of municipal housing needs in ten years; and the landlords’ possibility to build social housing in their areas, if interested by these local plans, was cancelled. In this way, the municipalities had the duty of acquiring the areas and then they could assign them to public entities or private developers, who would build social housing following specific criteria.
- 6.
All the other entities were cancelled and Comitato Edilizia Residenziale (CER, Housing Committee) was created as central planning subject.
- 7.
Birth rate has decreased since the 1960s, while the life span has improved (longevity can be calculated as around 80 years nowadays).
- 8.
After Law 865/1971, which supported the rural values of the areas, in 1992 expropriations rose to half the real estate market’s values, and nowadays are calculated at market values. Obviously, expropriation could not hold the prices down by limiting land revenue. New social housing developments are, therefore, hard to promote, considering the high prices of the areas. For this reason, the new master plans of cities promote a mechanism of adjustments, including the choice of moving building rights from one area to another. It is called mechanism of perequazione urbanistica (“urban equalisation”).
- 9.
In 1993 the death rate exceeded the birth rate for the first time in the State’s history.
- 10.
According to national census data of 2011, migrants grew to 4 millions in 2011.
- 11.
Their working conditions are similar to those of Italian internal migrants in the 1950s and the 1960s, and those economic sectors have lower shares of unemployment.
- 12.
New financial resources were given to the regions in order to support the three types of social housing. Three two-year periods were identified to plan the policies (until 1998).
- 13.
This contribution was created to support national housing plans, like INA-Casa and GESCAL, which ended in 1973. Then funding was used by the State for different housing policies (see Sect. 2.2).
- 14.
From 2001 to 2013, 1.6 million Italian citizens moved from Southern Italy to the Northern and Central areas. 70 % of them were young people (Censis and Nomisma 2015). According to estimated data, between 2014 and 2030 Central and Northern parts of the country will grow by 7 % in terms of population, while the South will record −3 % (ibid.).
- 15.
In 2006, the incidence of rents on incomes was stronger for some population categories. For people under 35 and over 65, it was around 19–20 %. The geographical dimension also affects this rate. In 2006, rents had a 20 % impact on the income of the Italian population living in the central part of the country, while said impact was only 16.6 % in Southern Italy (ISTAT 2007).
- 16.
Housing was also considered in national financial norms (Law 244/2007) for improving the rental sector, and a new type of housing was defined to be rented at an affordable price for at least 25 years in urban areas that present a high degree of housing distress. This form of housing can be considered a service of general interest. It anticipated the definition requested by Law 9/2007.
- 17.
A second phase of integrated urban programmes was also promoted (Contratti di Quartiere II).
- 18.
Housing Plan implementation was delayed due to the disagreement between the government and the regions. The issues at stake were the lack of financial resources promised by the previous government for subsidised housing, and Berlusconi government’s attempt to reduce their competences regarding housing. After the Plan was enforced, all the Regions established their regional norms implementing the measures about private housing extension during 2009–2010.
- 19.
The expectation was that this system would attract an investment of 3 billion euros.
- 20.
CDP presented the updated situation in November 2015 at the conference “UrbanPromo Social Housing Milano”. The data presented here are the ones declared during that meeting.
- 21.
The majority of evictions has been in the most populated urban areas: Turin, Milan, Venice, Verona, Genoa, Bologna, Florence, Rome, Naples, Bari, Catania, and Palermo. There is no geographical distinction in the phenomenon of evictions between North and South Italy. In 2014 the numbers of evictions were higher respectively in the provinces of Bari, Turin, Rome, Genoa, Florence, Naples, Palermo, Verona, and Bologna (Ufficio Centrale di Statistica del Ministero dell’Interno 2014).
- 22.
30 % is considered as the threshold of economic sustainability.
- 23.
For other information regarding the first years after the crisis and the national government’s response, see the paper by Baldini and Poggio (2014).
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Caruso, N. (2017). Housing Policies in Italy: From Social Housing to Neo-Liberalism. In: Policies and Practices in Italian Welfare Housing. SpringerBriefs in Geography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41890-2_2
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