Italy without a home

Cities have become unaffordable for the average Italian family. The two most popular forms of access to housing, renting and mortgage, no longer work. Or rather: they no longer work for those who need a home to live in. The gradual shift of housing from an asset of use to a financial investment is at the root of the current housing crisis, which not only affects the poorest part of the population but directly involves the middle classes. The widening gap between wages and housing costs and the abandonment of housing policies, against a backdrop of job precarization, growth in the weight of real estate rents and the financialization of the economy, have made housing a tool for the accumulation of benefits and disadvantages. But the effects of the housing issue transcend personal bio- graphies, because the dynamics of the housing market influence the locational choices of families, workers and businesses, social and territorial mobility, and the growth of the urban and national economy, which is now absorbed by real estate rent. If the city itself becomes a commodity, the land and public housing stock a currency, today it is necessary to change trajectory, de-mercifying housing. Solutions for returning to homes and cities exist and are also within reach.