La contabilità per commessa nelle aziende di edilizia residenziale pubblica. Il caso pistoiese (1912-1938)

Within social tasks of public administration there is fixing the level of public housing rents. In Italy the regulation about social housing, issued in 1908, stated that the determination of public housing rents had to consider and cover the cost of the public service. In this sense, the experience of public housing in Pistoia can be considered pioneering and at the same time, original, as it was founded as a private initiative. In Pistoia, in 1908, was founded the “Società Anonima Cooperativa Case Popolari di Pistoia” for the construction of social houses. The aim of the research is to examine the Cooperative cost accounting system during the period 1912-1938 in order to highlight the method used in fixing public housing rents. Because, since 1908, Italian law required to fix public housing rents by considering the construction costs. The paper analyses previous studies about social housing with particular reference to historical researches. Previous studies were mainly focused on difficulties in the sector of social housing and their connection to the political issues instead of analysing management issues such as cost accounting and pricing. So this is one first in deep historical analysis about cost accounting methods in social housing sector. Consequently, the research was conducted according to the historical method. Documents and data were gained through the Social Housing Historical Archive of Pistoia recently reorganized. The results confirm previous studies about Italian companies tied to local government orders: the use of cost accounting was related to mandatory law instead of being the consequence of a specific need of managerial information. However, regardless of the aim of cost accounting, the research shows a particularly care in cost accounting system that gave specific information about timing, costing and, consequently, pricing in social housing. For each block of social houses the Società Anonima Cooperativa Case Popolari di Pistoia kept technical and accounting registers aimed to illustrate strategic objectives, funding, goods and services utilized by distinguishing in direct and indirect costs. Moreover, a specific document called financial plan was drawn up to demonstrate the financial sustainability of the construction of each block of social houses. These findings can be considered as a first step for further historical studies about performance of public housing, as results highlight how, at the time, it was possible to ensure the accounting balance by determining rents to coverage (mandatory) the final cost of the service. This context is the opposite to what is nowadays observed at national level as social housing sector highlight increasing difficulties in balancing. Based on these findings, it would be interesting to verify our results, extending analysis, through a diachronic comparison, in order to measure the impact in terms of financial and social consequences of different policy choices of social housing.