Italy’s homelessness crisis is not an issue rooted in lack of dwellings, rather in the absence of national housing policies, Airbnb’s and not trusting long-term tenants.
Authors: Greta Hirschberg, Yuliia Kyzyk, Matteo Scannavini, Hongyu Zhang
The housing crisis in Italy has gotten worse. While tens of thousands of people still live in the streets, new data published by the Italian National Institute of Statistics Istat show a staggering 10.7 million unoccupied dwellings in 2019, +52% when they were last collected in 2011 and almost 30% of total dwellings. On the other hand, many experts agree that the pandemic has increased homelessness, although there’s uncertainty about its real size.
Little data about homelessness is available in Italy: there were only two dedicated censuses in 2011 and 2014 which estimated, respectively, 47 thousands and 50 thousands people living in the streets or in public dormitories. Istat has recently revealed that over 96 thousand people didn’t have a dwelling in 2021, but, as explained by Caterina Cortese of fio.PSD, the National Federation of Organizations for Homeless People, the figures are not comparable with old data due to different methodologies. While 2014 data remain the most reliable to measure homeless with its proper definition, Cortese is sure that that count is underestimated.
The numbers show that the thousands that don’t have a place to live aren’t on the streets due to lack of dwelling, but rather because of a much larger structural issue. Sarah Gainsforth, an Italian journalist and researcher that specializes in social issues and urban transformations, tells us that there are two factors that explain the large amount of empty houses in Italy. On one hand, during the housing expansion after World War 2 that created the dwellings where most people live in today, the large majority of the accomodations were built for people with high income. Moreover, even today’s market “has no interest in building housing for a working class population”.
On the other hand, homeownership is what shapes wealth in Italy. State programs and public fundings promote homeownership. Houses are bought to have as assets and these are rarely rented out to long-term tenants. The lack of policies supporting the rental sector and the mismatch between housing prices and rents with income levels make landlords reluctant to rent out their homes to ordinary tenants. They are afraid they won’t be able to pay rent or that they will mistreat the property, and the eviction process can take up to two years. Thus, most of the time, they either rent it out on Airbnb or leave it empty and simply hold the property as an asset. For example, according to Istat in the municipality of Rome there were 167 thousand empty dwellings, 377 thousand in the whole province.
Gainsforth concludes that “the total lack of housing policies, at a state level, is to blame”. Finally, she explains that the pandemic worsened the wealth and income gaps, impoverished many households and intensified the empty house trend while thousands live in the streets. Cortese confirms that the situation is getting worse: “All the data we have about poverty tells us that it has increased in the last 3 years. During the pandemic, requests for food, clothing and medicines have risen significantly, involving people that have never needed these services before”.
However, “Homeless people represent just the tip of the iceberg of a very complex phenomenon”- explains Enrico Puccini, president of the Rome Housing Observatory, regarding the housing crisis in Italy. Not only are there millions of empty houses that are owned by private people while thousands don’t have a home, but also the social housing system is failing. Council houses, which are rented out to low-income people and families on a subsidized basis, are often neglected. “Managing authorities cannot do the maintenance, because they don’t have the funds. Over the years, this has led to widespread degradation in the public housing districts” – explained Puccini. As a result, council houses, which already aren’t enough to satisfy the demand, are being sold as real estate assets.
Gainforth explains that the housing crisis is not recognized by most politicians. This is because most Italians own their homes, so it’s the minority that is excluded from the housing market. The last housing and population census by Istat shows that more than 3 out of 4 occupied houses are owned, while less than 17% are rented. If people aren’t lucky to find a landowner willing to rent, they are forced to live in the streets or in the diminishing council houses. As Puccini confirmed, there’s a “general disinterest” in the topic. “When the majority of the population owns a house, – he says – the housing question is marginal. We are at a dead end on this issue”.
Although Italy lacks a national housing policy, Cortese claims that the country made many investments in the last decade to improve homelessness services, trying new and promising strategies like the housing-first approach. “We are moving from a cultural welfare model based only on first-level assistance, such as soup kitchens and public dormitories, towards an intervention that instead includes these people in a program to emancipate them from the street, providing a house and intensive social support” – explains Cortese. “But this transition requires time” – she concludes.
This issue isn’t exclusive to Italy. Throughout the whole continent of Europe unoccupied dwellings remain empty while a housing and homelessness crisis is on the rise.
Even though the last time this data was gathered was in 2011, the homelessness situation is still a serious issue. Italy is a prime example of a country where the state is inadequate in solving this issue that further broadens the class gap and results in homelessness. Although there are other reasons that explain the amount of empty dwellings in Europe, the housing and homeless crisis is present in the whole continent. With more migration than ever this last decade and the Covid-19 pandemic this predicament has gotten worse. In essence, this is a structural issue that should be fixed in order for people to have roofs over their heads and fix the social housing system, not only in Italy but in the whole of Europe. There is a call for action.