The Italian Real Estate Funds for Social Housing: an insight into the Local Ethic Fund ìFASPî in Pie

The recent developments in the Italian housing finance are definitely playing a real chance in Italy: the lack of diversified and flexible tools and, above all, the shortage of public resources, led the Italian government to reduce its traditional massive supply of housing. The fact aimed at moving towards more decentralized initiatives as local cooperation between public and private stakeholders. In such a context the governmental act ìPiano Nazionale per líEdilizia Abitativaî, enacted last July 2009, represents now a turning point: it will provide local investors with a national regulation, introducing more flexible financial tools. This paper explains how the present regional public programs (see the ìProgramma Casaî in the Piedmont Regionî) will surely take advantage from the new scheme. Some of the facilities introduced regards the possibility of acquiring, for example, buildings and free land at a fair price, as well as to involve private partners available to earn not more than fair yields from their venture capital. Some major banking foundations (see i.e. the ìFondazione Housing Sociale ñ FHSî in Milan or the ìCompagnia di San Paoloî in Turin) began to invest in private-social housing projects through local programs (free grants, building and management of temporary dwellings, cooperation with the third sector, etc). Their growing experience could be spent by now for supplying housing in partnership with local public bodies. This study reflects the early fallout of actions led by means of the advisory activity (demand-supply analysis, pre-feasibility assessment, management tests) that the SiTI Institute, an instrumental research body founded by the Polytechnic of Turin and the ìCompagnia di San Paoloî Foundation, has developed to support the start up of the forthcoming real estate ethical Fund ìFASP-Fondo Abitare Sostenibile Piemonteî in the local context of the Piedmont Region. Moreover, in order to gather the sense of the Fund (shared by 9 banking Foundations as well as by the Piedmont Region) and to address appropriate social housing interventions within the Piedmont Region, this paper offers an insight of the present housing discomfort in Piedmont, with a particular deepening into the ìrents on incomeî ratio, that, during last 10 years, has been increasing, especially for particular social groups, as it emerges analyzing the recent increasing phenomenon of the family unit fragmentation.