Housing hardship in Tuscany and its impact on household poverty

Position Paper 34/2024 | March

edited by Chiara Agnoletti, Claudia Ferretti and Maria Luisa Maitino

The concept of housing deprivation encompasses conditions of deprivation characterised by varying degrees of intensity: from the most acute manifestations, i.e. phenomena of outright housing exclusion, to less manifest but more widespread forms of deprivation, implying some form of housing inadequacy, from its location to its size, from the quality of its state of maintenance to the excessive economic burden on family resources.

This last aspect, known as the problem of home affordability, is the most widespread in mature development territories and the most sensitive to changes in the economic context. In fact, it is the result of the interaction between several factors: the evolution of the labour market, in terms of duration of contracts and level of wages, on the side of the availability of income by households; the level of market prices of houses and the cost of mortgages, or the level of rents, on the side of family outgoings to be sustained.

The combination of these factors tends to assume differentiated articulations by territory, with greater peaks of hardship in more expensive areas such as urban and tourist areas, and by social subjects, with greater difficulties for younger and lower-income families, as well as greater instability in the labour market. Since housing is a primary need, which can only be contained to a limited extent, it is clear that as the disproportion between available resources and housing costs grows, so does the exposure of households to poverty.

In what follows, we propose the construction of a home affordability index and the analysis of its evolution over time, as well as its territorial and social articulation. This is followed by a reminder of the housing policy instruments in force and an estimate of the financial needs for their strengthening.