The series of in-depth columns curated by Giulia Muratori, secretary of Libera San Marino, continues.
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What if the answer were social housing?
In several European cities, thousands of young people are taking to the streets to demand something that should be normal: being able to afford a home, live off their own work, and build a future.
Behind those demonstrations lies more than just frustration over sky-high rents.
There is a generation that fears it may never achieve, despite working and studying, the economic stability and independence that were, for many of their parents, far more attainable goals.
In our own country too, the difficulties are increasingly evident. Young people staying at home with their parents, couples putting off their plans, families struggling to find affordable housing.
We cannot ask young people to believe in our country’s future without creating the conditions for them to build that future here.
In recent years we have introduced some responses, starting with the housing emergency law. These were necessary measures, representing a first step.
But we must acknowledge that, for too long, we have left the task of building and providing housing largely to the market, intervening mainly through financial support measures.
When available housing is scarce and prices keep rising, subsidies risk chasing an increasingly unaffordable market.
The time has come to reconsider the State’s role in housing policy.
Social housing is a model in which the public sector, cooperatives and other stakeholders work together to build homes at accessible prices and rents, including for those who have a job but still cannot keep up with market costs.
This is not an entirely new idea, not even for San Marino.
Our Republic has had a period in which housing cooperatives and public housing represented a concrete response to families’ needs.
These were experiences born from the conviction that access to housing should not depend solely on individual financial means.
Housing cooperatives allowed several families to join forces to build their own homes, sharing costs and benefiting from public support schemes.
Rather than buying a home individually on the market, members participated together in its construction, with the chance to access a first home on more favourable terms.
It was a way of turning an individual need into a collective response.
But there is one aspect of our history that deserves to be rediscovered.
San Marino’s 1980 legislation already provided for two options: cooperatives that assigned ownership of homes to their members, and cooperatives with undivided ownership, in which the dwellings remained the property of the cooperative and were made available for members’ use.
This latter model is particularly interesting today, as it makes it possible to envisage a housing stock that is not gradually sold off on the market, but continues over time to offer affordable homes.
An interesting example comes from Austria, specifically from Vienna, where public and cooperative housing have for decades been a cornerstone of housing policy.
According to official data from the City of Vienna, the Austrian capital has around 220,000 municipal flats and 200,000 cooperative or subsidised housing units.
This is a system aimed not only at those in greatest need, but also at workers and families on average incomes.
The principle is simple: build a stock of affordable housing that remains available to the community over time.
Non-profit cooperatives can build and manage housing units, with rents tied to costs and resources reinvested in the housing system.
San Marino is obviously not Vienna. But the Austrian experience shows just how important a public and cooperative housing sector can be in offering a stable alternative to the private market.
This is not, therefore, about importing a model foreign to our reality, but about reviving a Sammarinese tradition and developing it with new tools.
And we have already begun to create some of the right conditions.
With the Strategic Territorial Plan (Piano Strategico Territoriale) we have introduced three new functions in areas designated for State services: co-housing, university student housing and housing communities.
This choice opens the door to experimenting with new ways of living, encouraging collaboration between the public sector and cooperatives, and responding to different needs.
Now we need to understand how to turn these new regulatory possibilities into actual homes.
We don’t necessarily need to envisage large housing complexes.
We can start with small-scale interventions, with the recovery of unused buildings, and with innovative, sustainable construction that pays attention to the quality of spaces and services.
An initial goal could be to identify the most suitable areas as early as 2027 and launch a feasibility study for a pilot public or cooperative housing project, defining costs, funding and eligibility criteria.
This would be a concrete step towards a multi-year programme for affordable housing, able to pair traditional public housing with new forms of cooperative housing and sustainable-rent homes, aimed at struggling families but also at young people and workers on ordinary incomes.
This is not a battle against the private market.
It is about recognising that when the market alone cannot guarantee an essential need, politics has a responsibility to step in.
This is a choice consistent with the policies we are pursuing to support families, encourage the birth rate and give greater opportunities to younger generations.
The protests by young Europeans remind us that we cannot accept as normal a society in which working is no longer enough to afford a home.
Politics must once again take up this issue — not simply by helping people pay for ever more expensive homes, but by going back to building homes that people can actually afford.
