The fascist housing regime: policies, market and social wellbeing

The aim of this paper is to define the fascist housing regime and to provide a first evaluation of its outcomes in terms of social well-being. The concept of housing regime is understood as the whole set of interactions between policies and market. The outcomes are related to housing adequacy in terms of cost, physical size, physical and neighborhood quality. The analysis focuses on the tools adopted to counter the shortage of affordable housing for low-income households: rent control, tax exemptions and subsidized loans on the supply side. The fascist housing regime is defined through the features that shaped its functioning: the goals of the housing policies, the role of housing providers (landlords, builders, cooperatives, public agencies), the variables that affected the housing needs, the supply of new buildings, the spread of homeownership and the dynamics of prices and rents. This approach leads to assess the effectiveness of public intervention in increasing the market ability to meet the housing needs of Italian households. The available sources suggest an increase of housing supply for the middle and lower-middle classes, especially state employees and workers with stable employment, confirming the trend towards «professional fragmentation» of the fascist social policies