A model to assess the feasibility of public-private partnership for social housing

The effects of the world economic and financial crisis, which began in 2007 and is still in progress, has made increasingly sharp the line of demarcation between those able to access home ownership on the free market, and those unable to do so. For the European Union's member states, Social Housing (SH) policies include all the initiatives aimed at providing housing support for all the weak segments of the population; these policies have declined differently by different Member States according to their specific needs. In Italy, the growing need for SH accommodation together with the shortage of public resources makes developing forms of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) necessary. Evaluation techniques like Break-Even Analysis and Contribution Margin Analysis are useful in planning interventions including SH initiatives in the context of real estate development or retraining initiatives in PPP (in negotiation processes or in project financing). These kinds of techniques especially allow evaluation of public and private convenience in PPP. In the present work, an assessment procedure has been structured: first the main parameters of a settlement of SH initiative in PPP are defined; subsequently, it is possible to assess the feasibility and the financial balance of the initiative itself. The procedure has been applied to a case study: the interrupted initiative of self-renovation in Via Grotta Perfetta 315 in Rome (Italy).