Euro funds, vacant buildings to tackle student housing crisis

With demand for student housing far outstripping supply and student protests spreading, universities and authorities in Italy are tapping into European and public funds – and vacant public buildings – to tackle the crisis. Universities reportedly provide less than 5% of the beds needed by out-of-town students.

Concerns about the shortage of student housing are growing rapidly. A series of rallies sparked a nationwide protest in more than 25 cities during October, with the government and universities scrambling to respond.

The country’s higher education accommodation challenges were highlighted nationally in May this year, when an out-of-town environmental engineering student at the Polytechnic University of Milan pitched a tent and camped on university grounds in protest, saying she could not afford to live elsewhere.

The protest quickly spread to other Italian cities, and soon student tents appeared outside universities all over the country.

They have put Italy’s right-wing government under pressure to deliver and efficiently spend the €960 million (US$1 billion) earmarked for higher education accommodation in Italy’s post-pandemic National Recovery and Resilience Plan, drawing finance from the European Union’s Recovery and Resilience Facility.

According to the European Commission, this funding should bring “the offer of student accommodation from the current 64,000 places to 120,000 places by 2026”.

However, according to figures from the 2022 Report on Student Conditions in the university system, by the National Council of University Students, there are 36,478 available beds in Italy’s publicly run student residences, covering only 4.77% of an out-of-town student population of 764,146.

This means most non-local students secure their own housing in the more expensive private market. According to real estate site Immobiliare.it, a single room in Milan costs on average €630 per month, reaching €760 in and around the historic centre, compared to Bologna and Rome, where a single room costs €500 per month.

Rents too high, say students

A recent report from the national University Students’ Union (UDU), with the national trade union federation Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro and the national renters’ union Sindacato Unitario Nazionale Inquilini e Assegnatari, surveyed 20,000 out-of-town higher education students in 2023 on housing conditions.

It found that 56% of students surveyed said rents were too high; 47% said the living conditions in available apartments were below an acceptable standard; and 41% complained about the difficulty of finding suitable accommodation.

Due to high rents, the majority of those surveyed said they lived one to two hours away from their university, such as in suburban areas and nearby municipalities where rents are 25% lower according to Immobiliare.it.

Also, about 14.4% of those surveyed by UDU said they worked full- or part-time while studying, and 29.3% worked occasionally or seasonally to support themselves.

Milan tackles student housing problem

The city of Milan is working to address the shortage of affordable student housing for the city’s approximately 120,000 out-of-town students.

In September, at the start of the academic year, Milan officials introduced a plan to increase the number of affordable beds for higher education students by providing 600 new spots for students to rent, for between €250 and €350 a month.

The spots will be in 311 apartments in municipal housing complexes that are currently vacant and slated for renovation and they will be available for the 2024-25 academic year. Renovations will be co-financed, for an estimated €10 to €15 million, by city coffers and by PNRR post-COVID funds.

However, despite being involved in talks with city decision-makers over this proposal, the UDU opposes this solution.

“We don’t believe that taking affordable social housing units away from others who are in need, like low-income persons, is the answer; this is certainly not what we are asking for,” Niccolò Piras, a Milan-based UDU organiser, told University World News.

In a meeting with Italy’s ministry of universities and research in October 2023, the UDU requested an immediate €100 million in financing to support non-local students, and another €300 million to increase scholarships. It also asked for private rental sector reforms to discourage short-term tourist rentals and vacancies.

Thus far, PNRR funding has led to the creation of approximately 8,500 more beds in 2023, said the ministry. Additionally, last month the ministry announced the creation of a national €500 million fund that would finance 5,400 more beds in public-run residences.

Universities tap funds for more beds

Some of Italy’s larger universities are already tapping into available ministerial or regional financing and PNRR funds to increase bed capacity for non-local students.

In June this year Rome’s Sapienza University inaugurated a new residence, with 166 single and double rooms, each with a private bathroom and shared living spaces.

Last month Milan’s State University – Università degli Studi di Milano – announced the creation of 208 new beds, which will be added to the 1,193 already available, and 1,100 future beds for which solid plans that are already earmarked for the future.

Thanks to PNRR funding, the northern Piedmont regional government has created 500 additional beds in existing residences in Turin and Novara in the 2023-24 academic year.

Meanwhile, to attract more international students, Sicily’s University of Messina has used university and research ministry plus PNR funds to rent a hotel close to its campus, called Hotel Liberty, to house international students.

Despite these advances, UDU has concerns about how the next tranche of PNRR funding will be spent. It is too focused, it argues, on building private student residences, where single rooms can cost up to €EUR1,000 a month.

Call to use vacant public property

However, Giovanna Iannantuoni, newly elected president of CRUI, the association representing Italian universities – Associazione delle Università Italiane – believes that collaboration between public institutions, universities and private entities is essential to meet an Italian PNR target of creating 51,500 new beds by 2026:

“Student housing suffers from historical underfunding and the funding set forth in the PNRR is underestimated. Since this is an urgent problem, it is, indeed, unthinkable to build student residences for thousands of students over a period of several years,” she told University World News.

There is an incredible amount of vacant public property that could be made available for students, she noted. “What is certain is that the final proposed rental rates cannot be the same or similar to those of the private market. And it is in this direction that we must work,” Iannantuoni concluded.

Invimit SGR, a company wholly owned by Italy’s ministry of economy and finance, has promoted a new OPA Project, designed to acquire unused, market-ready buildings for conversion into student housing.

It launched a public offering in mid-2023 to buy assets owned by municipalities, provinces, regions and other public entities, and to finance their renovation and operation via private investors and PNRR funds.

Some 108 applications were received, the majority from southern Italy. “It is estimated that about 35% of these vacant buildings could be suitable for student housing. Therefore, it makes sense to allocate them for this purpose,” Invimit CEO Giovanna Della Posta told University World News.

The objective is to keep rents as low as possible, she said: “We know that rents in some cities like Milan can reach up to €1,000 for a one-bed studio located in the city centre and we are aiming to do our best to go below that figure, however our focus is now on city peripheries ... a tentative target would be around €500 to €700 per room in residences located in outlying districts.

“But it will take lots of work and fine tuning,” said Della Posta. “We’ll really have to be careful about the economics.”