Our study is detailed in the book La gestione strategica dei servizi abitativi (Strategic Management of Housing Services), curated with Massimo Bricocoli from the Milan Polytechnic). It describes the latest leg in a research path that lasted more than seven years. Much of our work was inspired by a years’ long collaboration with Federcasa (the Italian association of public housing companies) and many other participating organizations, beginning with several based in the region of Lombardy.
In 2019, with the help of heads of public housing companies, we finalized the first phase of our study by describing and underscoring the strategic change that was underway in these organizations, from entities that manage the stock of public housing to welfare-related service providers. We published our findings in a book curated with Giovanni Fosti, entitled Valore pubblico delle Aziende Casa (Public Value of Housing Companies).
Here’s an excerpt: “Public housing is the place where the most urgent social issues of the day converge. Many residents embody more than one aspect of vulnerability, in addition to being low-income earners… Inevitably, this complexity and social hardship shape the production processes for public housing companies, putting tremendous pressure on housing allocation systems, complicating how squatters are dealt with, generating diverse forms of rent arrears, and disheartening personnel who have the closest contact with tenants.”
In 2021, we presented Management dei servizi abitativi pubblici (Public Housing Services Management), a collection of ten case studies on as many public housing companies. In our report, we drew comparisons on business parameters - governance, budget, market relationship, and service models - illustrating the main managerial challenges these organizations face.
With our recent La gestione strategica dei servizi abitativi, which we mentioned above, we went into the field with a team of researchers from SDA Bocconi (Vittoria Baglieri, along with the two authors) and the School of Architecture and Urban Studies from the Milan Polytechnic (Massimo Bricocoli, Emanuele Belotti, Marco Peverini, and Constanze Wolfgring), seven of us in all. We interviewed tenants who live in a public housing complex in Milan managed by ALER (one of the city’s public housing companies). Our aim was to investigate how different housing service management models can boost the capacity of the service to generate more social inclusion in neighborhoods.
What emerged from our interviews is that for tenants, the primary value of living in public housing is social protection and inclusion. This public patrimony can represent a haven for individuals and families who are struggling, contributing to social cohesion and economic stability in a city like Milan, which is in the midst of a housing crisis.
By comparing the variety of experiences in public housing management that we found in the same portfolio of ALER properties, we were able to tease out the elements of the model that are most effective in generating value for residents. What we found is that a model works when it’s based on proximate services and overseers (in addition to custodians), who serve as social antennas, and ensure that tenants respect the rules of community life, helping reduce conflict.
We refer to this management model “strategic” because it integrates technical, administrative and social aspects. In fact, the solution to administrative problems can alleviate social ones and vice versa. This approach fosters an integrated, proactive vision of public housing services management, which paves the way for patrimony of public housing to become a bastion of social cohesion and inclusion.