Sassari A breath of fresh air to start putting order and planning for the future. With a council resolution signed by the councilor for public works, Antonio Piu, the Region has allocated 27 million euros to the coffers of Area, the regional public construction company. The package financed by the Region also includes 43 million of funds not spent by the previous regional administration, which sets the total at 70. Little more than a breath of fresh air, in fact, for the public housing system headed by Area which currently manages 24 thousand publicly owned homes. Thinking in perspective, to secure the entire real estate assets of Area, 500 million euros and a period of time of no less than ten years would be needed. Councilor Piu, however, is about to launch an intervention plan drawn up precisely to arrange, making it safe, all the housing in the Area. On the way, however, there are several obstacles to overcome, first of all the one that prevents the Region from understanding with absolute precision how many requests for public housing there are because, for the moment, the total number of applicants is an indefinite number that is lost among the paths of lack of communication that characterizes the relationships between the five territorial areas of the Area, the municipalities that are late in presenting or drawing up the rankings and the citizens who have expressed the need for accommodation.
The new approach «It is my first council resolution and we made it specifically on public residential construction because, for my department, this is the theme of topics – explains councilor Antonio Piu -. Now these 70 million will have to be used following a framework agreement that will be structured within the next few months and which will allow the five territorial areas of the Area (Sassari, Nuoro, Oristano, Carbonia and Cagliari, ed)a correct distribution of funds with respect to the number of accommodations”. The framework agreement cited by the councilor will allow the implementation times of the interventions to be shortened because a contract of this type would allow operations to be carried out even in the absence of a complete agreement, as long as the details are resolved within the last stages of the “project”. After the first step, the Department of Public Works will move the planning to a five-year horizon with the injection of other funds intended for public residential construction: «The objective is the regeneration of all the real estate assets and to achieve to reach 50 percent of this objective we would need 250 million euros which, without any problems, we hope to be able to put together within the next five years – explains Piu again –. It would be important to give a concrete response by fixing a good percentage of housing but I have no intention of creating illusions because to complete this work and secure all the buildings owned by Area, at least 500 million and ten years would be needed.” Piu refers to the 24 thousand publicly owned houses which are divided into five territorial areas which include 7,002 homes in Cagliari, 6553 in Sassari, 4327 in Carbonia, 3511 in Nuoro and 2517 in Oristano. The regulations Fixing facades, cornices and making housing more efficient is an urgent commitment but it is not the only one. In Councilor Piu’s agenda there are also several passages dedicated to the regulatory reorganization of the Area: «We will have to bring order to the regulatory instruments to affect the recovery of real estate assets. Let’s start by taking stock of the laws that govern the regional agency, such as the 2016 law that reorganized the service, and those that regulate the assignment of housing, such as the 1989 law – the councilor further explains, adding – and there is a lack of long-term planning that allows us to have tools to use the funds quickly.”
The black hole The biggest obstacle, and a huge contradiction when it comes to public housing, is that the Region, at the moment, is not able to quantify the demand for public housing. In other words, it is not possible to give a number to the housing needs of citizens in difficulty: «There is a lack of unitary programming based on needs – confirms the councilor – and the territorial areas are disconnected from each other. We don’t even have software that can put all the rankings together. I don’t want to lay the blame on those who preceded me, also because we are suffering from a twenty-year delay, but it can be said that we are starting to clear up the rubble of a system that does not work as it should, even though Area is actually a company that can count on the high skills of its staff. However, 360 degree planning is necessary which provides for the centralization of requests because it does not mean that the needs of some cities cannot be met where there are many requests and there are no houses with the towns where there are houses but not people. Then there are the new needs to evaluate, such as those of separated fathers who are unable to pay rent. And, even more so, everything must be put online.”
