In the new Housing Plan launched by the government, “affordable housing” takes shape, i.e. housing at affordable prices for those with an income, but not so high as to be able to rent or buy at market values. A rapidly growing segment.
That the housing emergency was a problem affecting the whole of Europe is now a fact to which Italy has responded in recent days with the launch of the House Planwhich promises to build 100,000 homes in 10 years. The total public resources mobilized are equal to 10 billion to which private investments will be added which together generate a multiplier. A plan that touches almost all the housing chapters: in fact it provides for major maintenance of over 60 thousand council homes in properties that are currently unusable; interventions for social housing – i.e. student dormitories and residences for the elderly – and then a project for the so-called “affordable housing”, i.e. properties at affordable prices for that sector referred to as the “grey band”.
We are talking about those who cannot afford rent or purchase at market prices, but who have incomes that are too high to be included in the social housing rankings: in short, not rich enough and not poor enough at the same time. This makes modern accessible housing a plan of great interest. The target does not coincide with the classic beneficiary of public housing as the potentially interested subjects are mainly young graduates with precarious contracts, workers transferred to big cities, separated parents, self-indulgent elderly people.
The new Housing Plan for the gray band and young people
But let’s start with the data. Between 2015 and 2024, house prices in the EU increased by an average of 53% and housing costs exceeded 40% of disposable income for 9.8% of families living in cities and for 6.3% of those in rural areas. The EU Commission has calculated that to fill the gaps in Europe it is necessary to add around 650 thousand homes per year at the current levels of new supply (around 1.6 million per year) at a cost of 150 billion euros every 12 months. In Italy, between 2015 and 2024, the average share of income allocated to housing was 13.6%. Between 2010 and 2025, rental prices increased by an average of 27.8%. We are faced with a widespread emergency across the Union.
According to the OECD, 79% of Italians between 20 and 29 still live with their parents, the fourth highest percentage in the EU. Nomisma it is estimated that 15.5% of families are in housing difficulty, with 1.5 million families in an acute situation. Meanwhile, rents are expected to grow between 6 and 9% during 2026, with double-digit peaks in the main university cities.
The risk for the right to live in cities
«In Italy, as in all of Europe, the right to live is strongly at risk. It is not a problem that only concerns the most vulnerable but involves all segments of the population in a crisis with profound social contours. The inaccessibility of real estate costs is making it impossible for entire classes of workers, students and young couples to reside in the most dynamic and attractive cities. Where there is work there is often no house and where there is a house there is no work” states the president of ANCE (the Association of Building Builders), Federica Brancaccio. And it underlines the urgency of «an accessible housing plan, increasing the supply of housing, mobilizing financing and promoting simplifications and reforms. We need flexible urban planning tools as well as intervention on the financial system.”
There are therefore all the conditions for the development of “affordable” housing. The government’s Housing Plan wants to concentrate all Italian and European funds in a single instrument managed by Invitationa public company for a total commitment of 3.6 billion. Alongside this, the provision aims to create the conditions to involve robust private investments.
The agreement between public and private and the fiscal issues
Based on this model, the State assures the private individual who wants to invest bureaucratic simplifications and fast procedures; in exchange, the private individual will have to guarantee that, out of 100 homes to be built, at least 70 are of subsidized construction, i.e. with a discounted price of at least 33% compared to the market price. For social housing, it is also expected to halve the costs of notaries.
At this point the evaluation of how attractive this type of operation can be is triggered. The mechanism is objectively interesting and deserves to be explored further. The benefits are twofold. For the tenant it means having a modern home at a rent that does not exceed 30% of the net income. The investor would have a favorable tax regime, with a flat rate reduced to 10% and the advantage of a solvent user with an effective arrears rate which, according to the most updated data, places at 3%.
An example is the 5Square project in Redo Sur a Milan which won the Uli Europe Awards for Excellence 2025, an urban planning Oscar. Promoted by the Cariplo Foundation, the Lombardy Region and Cdp as “anchor investor”, it transformed five abandoned tertiary buildings into 468 apartments, integrating kindergartens, health services and social laboratories. TO Rome the PINQuA projects (National Innovative Program for the Quality of Living), financed by the Pnrr, involve the construction of public residential buildings in key areas, from Tor Bella Monaca to the Porto Fluviale in Primavalle.
“It’s good that the government has put housing back at the center of the agenda, through the recovery of public assets and the involvement of private capital”, concludes Brancaccio, who calls for “a more incisive system of incentives even below large billion-dollar interventions”. The game is only just beginning.
