Solo Transitori is a campaign that collects data, analysis and personal experiences on the issue of housing in Venice. Inhabitants are essential for the survival of the city, but in Venice their numbers are constantly declining also because of the difficulty in finding affordable housing.The experiences of residents are intertwined with complex factors such as tourism pressure on the housing market, the student population and the housing policies of public institutions.
Solo Transitori develops this theme through the city using posters and an online page, where you can share your own story about your personal search for a housing solution in Venice.
Solo Transitori is a project in collaboration with Maria Fiano and Giacomo Salerno from OCIo and Francesco Bevilacqua.
LATEST UPDATE ON THE COLLABORATION WITH ATA:
We are here Venice supports the Alta Tensione Abitativa (ATA) campaign to limit the uncontrolled spread of short-term rentals nationwide in order to safeguard residency.
On Saturday 18 March 2023, an important meeting of ATA campaign was held at the Istituto Veneto (Venice) to present the proposal for a national law to regulate short tourist rentals and support residency. The proposal is the result of long joint work by lawyers, architects, town planners and inhabitants.
Presented on 6 March 2022 at the Toniolo Theatre in Mestre on the occasion of the screening of Andrea Segre’s film “Welcome Venice”, the proposal has been modified and refined in a collective process shared with other cities’ administrators, experts, inhabitants feeling the need to regulate the phenomenon.
FOCUS EDILIZIA RESIDENZIALE PUBBLICA (Celestia/Santa Marta):
Public housing is an important cornerstone of the right to housing. It is therefore necessary to take specific steps to reverse the trend of disinvestment, which instead was reinforced by the most recent regional law n. 39/2017. It is essential to increase public investment in housing at least to the European level and to adopt urgent measures to reduce housing costs, to arrest the sale of ERP assets, to maintain housing and to assign all the ERP homes that are currently vacant.
CELESTIA:
In the building of the former Scuola Meccanici at Celestia, 60 dwellings are planned for ‘a new social residence’. The project was never started due to “the delays in issuing the implementing decrees provided for by the legislation for the completion of the so-called ‘federalismo demaniale’, which concerns the transfer of real estate from the State to the Municipality” (Note of the Municipality of Venice, prot. no. 270746 of 17 June 2013).
Nine years later, the situation of the property remains unchanged.
SANTA MARTA:
ERP (Public Residential Housing) in Santa Marta: on the basis of the latest available data on ATER’s property, which is not very recent, the inspections in Santa Marta verified together with the inhabitants the state of affairs of the public property managed by this Authority. A total of 261 ATER housing units were surveyed, variously distributed, of which 52 were unassigned. This is about 20% of the public property lying unused, often still in good condition and habitable with minor interventions.
Source OCIO
FOCUS PUBLIC RESIDENTIAL BUILDING (Quintavalle/Casette):
“Ater (Azienda Territoriale per l’Edilizia Residenziale) investment in building maintenance for the island city’s housing collapses from more than EUR 18 million in 2009 to EUR 3.2 million in 2018, and many dwellings year after year are being alienated: more than 360 in the last 10 years, and ATER’s new sales plan envisages a further 828 alienations in the municipality.”
QUINTAVALLE:
The Quintavalle district in Castello was built by the Commission in 1909 over an area of approximately 5,000 square metres, cultivated with vegetable gardens and an old public bath: it was made up of nine buildings (which still exist today) with a total of 84 flats and 4 shops. With the establishment in 1914 of the Istituto Autonomo Case Popolari (IACP), today ATER, the municipality decided to transfer some building areas and 686 flats built by the Commission in Venice to the new institute. Many of these dwellings are withdrawn from assignment and are therefore closed. Maintenance work on those assigned was often carried out by the tenants.
CASETTE:
The Casette (small houses) in Giudecca are an example of neglected public housing: in the years 1942-43 the IACP built, in the area near the church of Santa Eufemia, 9 buildings for just under 200 dwellings. Today more than a hundred of those dwellings are managed by ATER of which 58 are assigned and 63 formally vacant.
Source: OCIO
FOCUS PUBLIC RESIDENTIAL HOUSING (Ex Scalera/Ex Ospedaletto):
“In European capitals, public housing covers more than 20 per cent of the rental demand, playing a market calming role. In Venice this calming role of market rents, although probably insufficient given the pressure of the tourist market, is not only not being played, but even the modest offer of about 8% is being disposed of.” (Source OCIO, Abitare la città)
Solo Transitori highlights two of the social housing projects that have run aground in the process of being finalised (FORMER SCALERA) or that have never got off the ground (FORMER OSPEDALETTO), despite the time limit – now approaching, in 2025 – for their use as rent-controlled housing.
FORMER SCALERA:
The story of the former Scalera is part of a broader context, that of the concession to the Acqua Marcia company of the Giudecca area that insists on the former Molino Stucky. At the end of the 1990s, the company, in exchange for the convention facilitating the restoration of the Stucky, undertook to build 50 residential units and to cede half of the housing units built to the municipality so that it could sell them at an agreed price. In 2009 the municipality published the call for bids for the sale of the 25 dwellings and 52 families responded, paying an advance of 10,000 euro. Work on the housing complex began between 2010 and 2011 and the municipality drew lots to select the winners. Three years later, the construction company, the Tasca company, stops work due to the property’s insolvency. Acqua Marcia was dissolved and its property compendium put up for sale. The semi-built accommodation is still abandoned today.
FORMER OSPEDALETTO:
A social housing project from 1999, between Barbaria de le Tole and Fondamente Nove a Castello, approved under the Starr programme of territorial social assistance by Ire. An area of 86,000 m³ designated as a residential area at a subsidised rent, by a resolution passed in 2013 and approved by deadline in 2015 for 120 flats. The use for the affordable housing will remain until 2025, but the project is currently at a standstill.
