Solidarity cohabitation

Living together to live better, combining forces and resources to find common answers to everyone's needs. Among the many experiences of living in common, there is one which in the academic debate has taken the name of " solidarity cohabitation”: to simplify, it exists when people live together in a logic of solidarity between the inhabitants of the house. A phenomenon that is difficult to survey, but which is increasingly developing.

It is intuitive that not all cohabitations can be defined as solidarity: just think of those that are formed on the market, made up of students and workers who decide to live together also, or perhaps above all, to share the costs of the house , rent first of all. Solidarity cohabitation instead requires the decision to share the hardships of everyday life by pooling resources and responses: it is for this characteristic that it has become the object of study in the context of welfare policies.

It is not easy to understand exactly how widespread it is in Italy: the more structured experiences, such as housing communities and apartment groups, coexist with a swarm of smaller and more experimental experiences, not yet included in the service network . Yet, although still relatively few, in Italy these experiences are very varied: there are groups of people with mental or physical disabilities, individuals emerging from homelessness, separated fathers, young people leaving protection paths and, more generally, people who, not having a solid informal network behind them, are unable to cope with particularly difficult events in life. There are homogeneous cohabitations (a group of single women with children) and non-homogeneous ones (the pairing of young and old or between students and refugees); they are usually temporary housing solutions, but there are also stable ones (people with disabilities, who need a lasting life project). And there are those forms, which concern people with particular vulnerability, where there is the intervention of educational, social and socio-health workers, but always in a residential accommodation (a "house", precisely), and not in large residential contexts.

The majority of shared housing units are managed by third sector bodies, often thanks to the economic support of banking foundations, but those included in the network of territorial services are also developing, based on the system of fees (the National Solidarity Cohabitation Network brings together those who deal with the topic or promote it). It is not an easy job, because it cannot be improvised: «To ensure that people can live together, a method and specific work tools are needed», remarks the professor of General Sociology at the Polytechnic of Milan, Giuliana Costa, who recently he wrote a volume on the topic. "They must be convinced of the goodness of going to live with others and must be able to give meaning to the experience, facilitating life together." In short, we need to find the right alchemy, using method and care. And there are more and more occasions when we can do it.

Stefano Caredda
NP April 2024