ASviS proposals for urban regeneration and housing policies

To improve housing conditions, a major national urban regeneration project is needed that guarantees consistency between regulatory interventions, sectoral policies and investments, with the establishment of an inter-ministerial control room that coordinates the various existing programs on the issue. In this way it will be possible to accelerate the achievement of some of the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN 2030 Agenda, improving the quality of life of millions of people and regenerating ecosystems and biodiversity. These are some of the proposals made by theItalian Alliance for Sustainable Development (ASviS) on the occasion of the presentation of the position paper “Government of the territory, urban regeneration and housing policies for sustainable development”during a press conference in the press room of the Chamber of Deputies in which they participated Alexander Battilocchio (Forza Italia), President of the Parliamentary Inquiry Commission on the suburbs, Andrew DeMaria (Democratic Party), Secretary of the same Commission, the scientific director of ASviS Enrico Giovannini and the editors of the position paper, Laura Mariani (national CGIL) e Simone Ombuen (Urban@it and University of Roma Tre).

During the meeting, ASviS underlined that the recent establishment, in the Chamber of Deputies, of a Parliamentary commission of inquiry into the security conditions and the state of degradation of cities and their suburbscan be an important opportunity to take stock of the situation and stimulate a strong political initiative on these issues, also to implement the eight proposals put forward by the previous Commission set up in the 2013-2018 legislature.

The position paper, drawn up by the ASviS working group on Goal 11 “Sustainable cities and communities”, deals with the issues of urban regeneration, the fight against land consumption, housing policies, the functioning of the rental market, with particular attention to “short-term leases”, putting forward concrete proposals on a regulatory and organizational level to ensure coordination of national policies and territorial in the light of the 2030 Agenda, which promotes a set of policies strongly connected to the concept of “government of the territory”, to be implemented through interventions based on sustainability. It is for this reason that, in the ASviS Reports on the Territories of 2021 and 2022, the adoption of state legislation is proposed which establishes the fundamental principles of territorial governance. Unfortunately – as underlined in the Position Paper – “a quarter of a century after Legislative Decree No. 112 of 1998, the last legislature ended for the umpteenth time without any provision in this regard having been approved, despite the principle ‘protection of the environment, of biodiversity and of the ecosystems‘ entered the Constitution with the renewed articles 9 and 41″.

The first proposal put forward in the document concerns the urgent approval of a set of rules, taken from the unified text of the draft law Measures for urban regeneration of the previous legislature (AS 1131 et al.), relating, among other things, to the planning of of urban regeneration in which urban restructuring, recovery and building replacement interventions are favored as they pursue the public interest, and the definition of related tax, urban planning, administrative and financial simplification benefits, also through the establishment of a specific National Fund, which the State guarantees for such interventions.

To counter the soil consumption it is proposed to approve a law which requests an agreement in the State-Regions Conference to determine the maximum amount of land consumption allowed in the territory of each region and its distribution by municipal or supra-municipal areas, providing that, if the agreement does not is reached within thirty days of the start of the discussion, the Government can autonomously define these quantities on the basis of predefined parameters.

ASviS also proposes: to consider the housing service for citizens who are in a situation of economic hardship as part of the Essential Levels of Performance (LEP) which must be guaranteed throughout the national territory; to program a sure and long-term flow of funding for housing policies, in particular for the redevelopment and increase of the public housing stock (ERP); to realize public university residences in the field of the right to study; to adopt programs relating to abandoned buildings to be allocated to the housing service and community services.

As regards the short leaseslegislation should be approved which gives the Municipalities the power to provide for: forms of limitation on the basis of an authorization regime; the differentiation by zones and by periods of the year; the identification of a maximum number of properties that can be offered under a short-term lease; the application of the limitations also to those who already carry out this activity; the prohibition of aggregating authorizations held by a single subject; the identification of the lease time limit allowed outside the authorization regimes, for example 90 days; the creation of public platforms, which make it possible to regulate the market and use the profits on the territory.