The Italian Housing Plan, introduced through Decree-Law 66/2026 and currently under discussion in the Chamber of Deputies, proposes an interesting architecture based on three distinct yet complementary pillars, corresponding to three intervention logics and three types of relationships between the public and private sectors.
- Public pillar — Public Residential Housing: 60,000 housing units to be developed primarily through the recovery and refurbishment of existing assets. The goal is to maximize the effectiveness of public spending by reducing the time and costs associated with new construction. This measure should bring most vacant housing units back into use (currently around 62,000 across Italy) through relatively small-scale interventions that are also within reach of small businesses, including craft enterprises. In this regard, public tenders for awarding contracts should encourage youth employment and the professional development of young people. On this front, collaboration between housing agencies and associations such as Confartigianato would be desirable. Concession tenders have been discussed, but unless demand risk—and therefore responsibility for managing the housing units—is transferred to market operators, this measure requires a different form of public-private collaboration, one that is not defined by procurement codes and is more oriented toward social and professional spillovers.
- Hybrid pillar — the housing fund managed by Invimit : this is potentially the most interesting pillar, as it combines public asset leverage with the attraction of private capital. This is where space opens up for public-private collaboration, not necessarily in the strict sense (such as a construction concession under the Public Contracts Code), aimed at repurposing portions of public assets for uses such as service housing, co-housing, and senior housing. Here, the combination of public assets and public capital should be capable of attracting private investment to deliver sustainable (affordable) solutions and social innovation.
- Private pillar — Social Residential Housing : the development of affordable rental housing within private real estate projects and urban regeneration initiatives, with the requirement that at least 70% of the housing units be offered at regulated rents and therefore at prices at least 33% below market value.
Recent tenders issued by the Municipality of Milan, inspired by the recommendations of HouseInc, as explicitly stated in the approval resolutions, represent an example of the private pillar. These involve 90-year surface rights concessions for the development of what has been defined as Affordable Social Residential Housing under the Extraordinary Affordable Housing Plan, through the enhancement of three disused, underutilized, or degraded municipal sites.
ERSC housing units are intended for permanent rental throughout the duration of the surface right, maintaining an average rent equal to or below €90 per square meter per year for a minimum period of 30 years. After this restriction expires, rents may rise to market levels but must remain at least 20% below market value. ERSC units must account for at least 60% of the total floor area. The remainder may be allocated to compatible unrestricted uses, particularly services and neighborhood retail on the ground floors.
SDA Bocconi supported the Municipality of Milan in assessing the feasibility of the tenders, which—following HouseInc’s recommendations, as explicitly stated in the approval resolutions—include incentive criteria for operators capable of designing not only high-quality buildings but also identifying positive spillovers during both the construction and management phases, to be measured through a dashboard of indicators. This is an important element for two reasons:
- It introduces, for the first time in housing tenders, the dimension of social impact that goes beyond merely quantifying the number of affordable housing units.
- It encourages the market, following the logic of the sophisticated buyer, to be more ambitious, more innovative, and more committed to the social dimension.
Partnerships: the five Ps
When neither the public nor the private sector can succeed on its own, the concept of partnership is invoked. To prevent it from remaining a slogan, a pragmatic and non-ideological approach is required: rather than relying on the traditional PPP model, we need to adopt variable-geometry arrangements and move toward the 5P model: Public Private Plural Philanthropic Partnership .
Public : the public sector is not merely a provider of resources but also a regulator, facilitator, and guarantor of the collective interest. The quality of its role—in designing instruments, selecting operators, and monitoring outcomes—is crucial to the success of the entire system. The ability to act as a sophisticated partner, stimulate the market, provide certainty, and experiment is essential for guiding ambitious and complex policies.
Private : private capital is indispensable, but it must be engaged through the right instruments. We cannot ask the market to deliver social policy without putting it in a position to do so in an economically sustainable way. This is why blended finance approaches are needed, combining public, private, and promotional bank capital to reduce the overall risk of investment and thereby generate financial additionality at a sustainable cost of capital. But private finance must also be committed to generating genuine system-wide additionality. This does not mean giving up market-rate returns; rather, it means identifying social innovation models and engaging the right expertise, not only the expertise developed through finance textbooks.
Plural : social innovation that generates both returns and impact requires the activation of a plurality of actors. A bilateral public-private partnership is not enough. Social operators, resident cooperatives (such as DAR Casa), third-sector organizations, universities, and foundations are all needed. Implementing HouseInc’s approach requires more than construction: housing is only one pillar of local welfare. And when public welfare alone is not enough, it becomes necessary to leverage the tools of the social economy, including co-production. This is why not only builders but also managers of these initiatives are needed: resident cooperatives capable of managing shared spaces through services designed for those who live there, while also attracting philanthropic capital and corporate and investor give-back initiatives.
Philanthropic : we know that more than 96% of employers make charitable donations. Yet these donations are often episodic and disconnected from corporate strategy. The time has come to make them strategic: aligning corporate philanthropy with housing and local welfare issues and integrating it with corporate welfare programs. Large companies already possess this capability and can extend it throughout their supply chains, systematically involving small and medium-sized enterprises as well.
Research and collaboration
There are two particularly interesting aspects of the Housing Plan: the effort to create a unified framework capable of addressing the complex housing issue through different instruments, and the institutionalization of the public-private relationship as a policy implementation tool. This public-private relationship cannot be confined solely to procurement procedures for refurbishing housing units or to the creation of a fund to finance affordable rental housing. Instead, this institutional framework should provide an opportunity to experiment with financial and social innovations capable of generating welfare additionality (not just housing), non-speculative financial returns that can be reinvested in the real economy—which is, after all, the core mission of long-term investors—and a strengthening of the country’s social capital.
Achieving this, however, requires strong institutional alliances, transparent governance arrangements, and analytical and monitoring systems capable of informing policy and investment decisions over time. This is an area where applied research and collaboration among academia, institutions, and the market can make a decisive difference.
The topics covered in the “Housing” Trending Topic are addressed in the executive education programs Partnership pubblico-privato per investimenti e servizi and PPP per investimenti e servizi pubblici , and are studied by SDA Bocconi’s Public Value Lab and Business & Government Lab .
