In 2025, housing deprivation in Italy is a structural component of the wider poverty crisis, linked both to income dynamics and to changes in the real estate and labor markets. According to Istat data, in 2024, 5.6% of the population lived in conditions of severe housing deprivation, i.e., in overcrowded dwellings with at least one serious structural, sanitation, or lighting problem, while the proportion of the population overburdened by housing costs stood at 5.1%, indicating households that allocate an excessive portion of their income to rent and utilities, with minimal margins for other essential expenses. The problem is particularly acute among young families: the proportion of households in severe housing deprivation where the main income earner is under 35 years of age rose from 7.6% in 2019 to 12.1% in 2024, signaling a major obstacle to achieving residential independence and an increase in the number of young adults who are unable to leave their family home despite having a job, often precarious or low-paid, thus becoming working poor.
Istat data also show that among people living in poverty who receive assistance, housing hardship is markedly multidimensional: one-third of users experience at least one form of housing hardship, more than one-fifth experience severe housing exclusion (homelessness, insecure or inadequate accommodation), and among those with stable housing, fragile housing situations prevail, such as private rentals or social housing, with marked differences to the detriment of foreign citizens, who are more likely to rent and less likely to own. In this context, housing deprivation in 2025 cannot be interpreted solely as a lack of housing, but as the result of intertwined trajectories of vulnerability—insufficient income, poor-quality jobs, precarious contracts, family weaknesses, and migration status—which produce a high risk of social exclusion for large segments of the population, particularly young people, families with children, and single people in urban areas with the highest rental pressure.
The housing emergency is deeply intertwined with the challenges of climate adaptation and urban regeneration practices, a common thread that was repeatedly mentioned during the “Cities in the Future 2030-2050” conference, promoted by ANCE from October 7 to 9, 2025. In this perspective, a social approach to urban regeneration based on biopolitics—which places the living conditions of human beings in terms of health, nutrition, demographic dynamics, and environmental risks at the center of political action—finds operational translation in “urban acupuncture” proposed by architect and sociologist Marco Casagrande, based on small, targeted interventions in strategic points of the urban fabric, capable of generating positive and widespread effects on collective well-being. Underlying this vision is the idea that cities are living organisms and that problematic or abandoned areas represent real points of energy loss: intervening in these areas means allowing people to reclaim them and reestablish a balanced flow of life. Even limited actions in “depressed areas” can thus contribute to revitalizing the urban fabric and opening up new opportunities in the most fragile places, as if human suffering were echoed and concentrated in living spaces, then radiating out across the entire territory. The shared goal of urban acupuncture is to reclaim spaces for citizens, so that residents can actively participate in shaping their everyday environment and experience it in a community-oriented way. Local resources play a decisive role in this process, as citizens—including those who live in marginalized conditions and struggle to access job or training opportunities through institutional channels—are considered the primary source of energy to be mobilized. Through specific actions, these people can become active again on an operational level, embarking on new individual and collective paths.
Promoting the social and professional integration of those experiencing difficulties, while increasing opportunities for social interaction through the services offered, generates, according to the principles of urban acupuncture, a virtuous cycle that benefits the entire community. This approach, intended as a regenerative metaphor for reinterpreting and relaunching social work practices, cultural animation, and community development in neighborhoods, ultimately aims to trigger a positive process capable of improving not only the livability of a single area but, by osmosis, that of the entire city, through the reappropriation of its forgotten parts.