The housing hardship in Rome. Public residential building vs social housing?

In recent years, the issue of housing hardship has reached levels, and taken on forms, comparable to those recorded in the sixties and the seventies. Since 2007, the domino effect of the financial-sector crisis, which quickly extended to the economy as a whole, and then became a pressing social problem, has heightened the demand for social housing, both in terms of emergency accommodations and in the so-called “grey area”. The Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated the situation, generating still more dire statistics. And yet, while in earlier decades the housing emergency was caused by a structural shortage in the stock of residential units, today the primary problem lies in the procedures dictated by the market for obtaining a home. Any study of housing hardship in the current scenario of climate change, a socio-health crisis and economic recession calls for strategies and tools able to lead to new models for restoring urban and territorial balance, as well as new housing policies, making it a field of research teeming with different theoretical, experimental and propositional perspectives. The paper, having first established the overall reference framework, sets out to illustrate the particular features of the “Rome dossier”, examining the regulatory, procedural, methodological and operational approaches taken over the last 25 years by the various city administrations, so as to highlight not only limits and obstacles, but also paths of ongoing development potentially able to mitigate housing hardship while furthering the complex process of urban renewal.