Almost a billion spent on the Housing Plan in the Budget Law. The League has presented a major amendment which provides for an expenditure of 877 million to be invested in residential and social housing until 2030, to be added to the 660 million already allocated. The last time similar figures were used to support the housing emergency in Italy was in 2014 with the Renzi government.
Article 133 bis, strongly supported by the Northern League, could increase the funds provided to provide housing for the elderly, young families and single people in conditions of economic precariousness.
What does the League’s Housing Plan consist of?
The Housing Plan could identify new models of residential and social housing to provide housing solutions to sections of the population in difficulty. However, it is not clear how the principles of the amendment should be implemented.
The text presented by the League talks about social housing programs with subsidized rent, on the basis of contracts for use and subsequent sale of properties, for young people and couples and the implementation of cohabitation projects for the elderly.
In short, the funds could also be used for new buildings. But is it really necessary?
Where do the funds for the Housing Plan come from?
Resources for new construction would not be pulled out of a hat. This would be money inherited from European post-pandemic resilience measures.
In fact, Next-Generation Eu envisaged the possibility of donating part of the funds foreseen for adaptation strategies to climate change to construction. It is no coincidence that art. 133 of the 2026 Budget has as its title Social Climate Fund.
The housing emergency and climate change
The two games, the housing one and the climatic one, are not at all as disconnected as they might seem.
With a view to updating the new Social Plan for the Climate (PSC), renovating the Italian building stock to avoid heat and energy loss would be a very expensive but beneficial decision in the long term, both in economic terms and in terms of environmental impact.
And it would make it possible to redevelop inefficient and disused properties also to allocate them to sections of the population in difficult situations, instead of proceeding with new buildings.
In Italy there are more than 12 million residential buildings (ENEA), of which less than one million comply with the most up-to-date energy and safety parameters. Only those homes for which the Ape certification (Energy Performance Certificate) has been produced have been taken into consideration in the table.
| Energy class | Percentage of certified buildings | Estimated residential number | Notes |
| A (A1-A4) | 7.6% | approximately 570,000 | Better performing buildings, new construction or redeveloped |
| BC | about 35% | approximately 2.63 million | Intermediate classes, good efficiency |
| DE | approximately 19% + 16% = 35% | approximately 2.63 million | Less efficient classes, buildings from the 60s-90s |
| FG | 45.3% | approximately 3.4 million | Older, inefficient buildings |
Insufficient funds to support the Housing Plan?
This means that the funding provided for by the amendment to the Budget Law will hardly be sufficient to modernize the Italian building stock. On the other hand, there are thousands of vacant and empty public housing units, because they are not up to standard, waiting to be renovated and inhabited by someone.
Considering the fact that in Italy there is no state public housing registry, here are some numbers of empty state-owned apartments in some regions of Italy:
- Lombardy, 48 thousand;
- Tuscany, 4,563;
- Umbria, 1,391.
Use the funds of Next Generation Eu for the construction of further buildings for residential use would imply further consumption of land that Italy has no longer been able to afford for some time.
The country continues to travel on the overbuilding of 20 hectares per day (Ispra): every year it is built on an area equal to that of Florence, Bologna and Turin combined. But there is little to hope for, given the Government’s intention to continue with the Berlusconi-style building amnesty.
