Housing policies beyond numbers: a comparative study in Portugal and Italy

The present communication aims to analyse how housing is organized in Portugal and Italy, with particular attention to recent housing policies. It is intended to describe and examine the following dimensions: a) discuss the legislative solutions adopted in the last years to solve the housing needs; b) show the epistemological difference for the concept of “social housing”; c) compare the institutional variations, namely, the relevance of the local, regional and central levels. Despite Portugal and Italy have the same percentage of social housing and some common characteristics of Southern Europe countries, they are diverse in the way to deal with social housing. The present communication wants to make it clear with a research question focusing on what similarities and
differences are present in comparative housing policies among Portugal and Italy. For such purpose, the methodology is organized in this way: i) bibliographic review; ii) analysis of the principal statistic data (e.g. public housing stock, age of the housing stock, subsidized public houses, public spending for housing (GDP), housing price index, etc.), iii) analysis of the recent
legislation; iv) interviews with public decision-makers.Notwithstanding a wide literature about housing studies in Northern countries and comparing North and South housing policies approaches, few studies focus on the comparison between Southern Europe countries. For this reason, the research seeks to increase the knowledge about the singularities of the South and thus contributing to the construction of a theoretical approach "South-inspired".