Homeless Italy

Cities have become unaffordable for the average Italian family. The two most popular ways of accessing housing, renting and buying, no longer work. Or rather: they no longer work for those who need a home to inhabit. The gradual shift of housing from home to financial asset is at the root of the current housing crisis, which not only affects the poorest part of the population but directly involves the middle classes. The widening gap between wages and housing costs and the dismantling of housing policies in the context of job precarization, the growth of real estate rents and the financialization of the economy, have made housing a tool of accumulation, both of benefits and of disadvantages. But the effects of the housing crisis transcend individual bioraphies: the housing market influences where families, workers and businesses move, in other words social and territorial mobility, and therefore urban and national economies, which are increasingly absorbed by real estate rent. Land, housing and cities themselves have become commodities. This is unsustainable: a shift is necessary beginning with the decommodification of housing. Solutions for re-enhabiting homes and cities exist and are also within reach.