The value of the house

Giorgio La Pira, mayor of Florence, wrote: "Bread, and therefore work, is sacred; the home is sacred, neither one nor the other can be touched with impunity." Cicsene, a non-profit organization founded by Professor Giorgio Ceragioli, will be present with a Good Practices stand at the 50th Social Week of Catholics in Italy in Trieste from July 3 to 7.

We are going there to seek a dialogue with those who will participate in the work and will have the opportunity to visit the stands. Housing is an emergency for the poorest but it is also becoming a problem for those who have a poor job and are in the so-called gray area. In Italy, the problem is not of bricks but of access to and maintenance of housing. In our country, one in four homes is vacant, equal to 9.6 million homes. However, 4.9 million people struggle to find a home. In its small way, Cicsene has accompanied 2,500 rental contracts in 20 years for families at risk of poverty and private owners. We believe in impartial and equidistant housing support that promotes dialogue between tenants and owners, we think it is necessary to foster trust in our communities and at the same time it is urgent to equip ourselves with new tools of guarantee and protection for the benefit of both owners and tenants. On this kind of experience in Trieste we want to say that it is urgent to join forces, to work together. Stefano Zamagni himself (Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Bologna) speaking of "Communities at Risk" asserts that a social thought is needed and that recreating trust in the community is a moral imperative. It is necessary to do cultural work because the Us, the I have been replaced by singularism, the extremization of individualism. Not alone but as a system. The co-design and co-programming envisaged by our legal system as a system between the public, economic and third sector is a great challenge to find local solutions to real problems: the 78 thousand empty homes, according to Istat, in the City of Turin alone question us on the lack of trust we have towards our fellow man and public administrations. Sometimes even well justified. And for this reason, therefore, we must also add innovative guarantee tools capable of responding to the unexpected: however, it is on a widespread climate of trust that the challenge must be played. Because the house is a private good but we must take into account the common good.


Gianfranco Cattai
NP June / July 2024