Another way to address the housing question in Milan is possible: we meet Federico Ugliano, Vice President of Cooperativa LUM.
Understanding what is happening in Milan today, from a housing and real estate perspective, is not easy.
Or rather, it is if it is explained through traces of multiple viewpoints, often in contrast with one another.
Milan is open. Milan is closed.
Milan is an altruistic city. Milan is in the hands of speculation.
Perhaps the answer to “what Milan has become” lies in accepting contradiction namely, the coexistence of opposing truths.
Is it possible to live sustainably in Milan?
What seems obvious, isn’t.
We met Federico Ugliano, Vice President of Cooperativa LUM, which we’ll be discussing, as well as Director of Spazio Teatro 89 and President of Fondazione Cotica ETS, which restored an ancient farmhouse and filled it with services for the community.
Hi Federico, tell us about Cooperativa LUM!
LUM – Libera Unione Mutualistica is a residents’ cooperative, and it’s important to underline that. What does a residents’ cooperative do? We could say it builds homes for its members (subsidised housing, private-market housing, etc.), or it builds them and rents them to its members at controlled prices.
LUM is a cooperative born last year from the merger of three long-standing cooperatives. The oldest was the one I also belonged to, Cooperativa Ferruccio Degradi, founded in 1909. So this organisational model has existed for 115 years a model that over time continues to be useful and sought after, for access to rents at a fair level, not “Milan-style”.
I say “rent”, but I should say “right of use”: these are contracts that formally renew automatically year after year. There is no formal renewal. They allow a person or a family to live in the assigned apartment for their entire life, on the sole condition that they pay the rent and expenses and behave in a decent and civil way. It provides stability – housing stability – which is fundamental.
The cooperative’s activity doesn’t stop there, because beyond offering these opportunities to those who wish to join and take part in allocation calls, it also proposes slightly different ways of living. Through a series of policies and activities, it tries to revive social life among people, avoiding for example conflicts based on prejudice or a lack of knowledge of one another.
LUM was born from the merger of three major cooperatives (Delta Ecopolis, Ferruccio Degradi and Abitanti di Settimo). What was the vision?
There was a shared awareness that unity is strength. Milan is changing. In this city, in recent years, large real estate funds have entered the market and are investing heavily (also, but not only) in rentals such as Redo Sgr, of which LUM is part. Having three separate realities, smaller in scale, didn’t allow us to be credible investors for foundations, institutions, and banks.
Because, you see, there is always an idea of the future in the cooperative model. All three of us could easily have stayed on our feet, small as we were but it would have been anachronistic.
Tell us about your relationship with Redo Sgr.
Redo is an asset management company backed by major investors, focused on developing social housing. LUM joined it a year ago with an equity stake. Redo has led significant projects, for example in the Figino neighbourhood, or at the farmhouse of Mare Culturale Urbano.
Redo offers controlled rents or “future purchase” agreements contracts through which, after eight years of renting, you can buy the home. We also act as social managers for them: we build and care for the relationship with residents, coordinate maintenance, listen to interested people and create activities that aim to connect people.
So being a member of a cooperative means participating in a common good, right?
Absolutely. What we try to do is continue the work of those who founded this concept in the last century. Residents’ cooperatives born in the early 1900s were mainly made up of blacksmiths, farmers and factory workers who, coming from the countryside, decided to join forces because they couldn’t buy a home in Milan. They teamed up to build these homes in their free time after work and allocate them to their families and to anyone who later wanted to join.
Back then, the housing issue already existed meaning: “how can I live in Milan?”
Today, with completely different dynamics, the question is the same: those who live in Milan, and those who want to move to Milan, face prices that are out of market. We try to respond to this problem.
And you manage to be economically sustainable.
Yes, because the concept of distributing profits does not exist. Whatever surplus the cooperative generates, it does not distribute it not to administrators, not to members but by law it reinvests it in the organisation. This is the difference. And it’s what allows us to keep rents non-lucrative and non-speculative, to maintain a fair balance between income and costs, and to generate a margin that can be reinvested back into the cooperative.
Let’s talk about Milan and the housing problem you already mentioned. From your point of view, what led to this housing unsustainability?
I believe that in Milan, since Expo, there has been an entrepreneurial and political short circuit.
For example, recent statistics suggest that between Milan and the surrounding province there are around one hundred thousand empty apartments: private owners or small companies don’t rent them out because, if they ever had to start an eviction process for non-payment, they would face a long, nightmarish procedure. We, for instance, took eight years to evict a person who wasn’t paying. Naturally, some people prefer to keep homes empty and pay IMU. But it becomes a short circuit that politics must address.
On the other hand, major events attracted major investments and, if Milan once had little tourism, it has now exploded: we need policies that allow operators to put public real estate assets and available areas back into circulation.
But you are building now, right?
In theory we should be building, but because of what is happening in Milan, everything is at a standstill.
For example, it happened to us that even regular subsidised housing projects unrelated to investigations and without SCIA issues were frozen for two and a half years. We are talking about around 300 housing units, a third of which would be rentals at controlled prices: an initiative truly rare in this city that should be rewarded, not blocked by institutions.
The Piano Casa was released almost a year ago, and only about ten days ago we read in the newspapers (we received confirmation via PEC after a week) that it had collapsed that it no longer existed.
For us, that meant a major missed investment: a project involving architects, engineers, our time and resources simply dissolved. For the city it means 10,000 fewer housing units, about 50% of which would have been rentals.
Why is all of this happening?
There was a change of councillor, investigations are ongoing, there are unspecified issues. Politics is blocked, and so are compliant interventions and companies like ours that are not involved in the investigations.
All of this happens because, in such a difficult moment, it is just as difficult to take responsibility.
All your new projects focus on energy efficiency and environmental sustainability. So is it possible for profit and sustainability to go hand in hand?
It is possible, but I believe stronger policies are needed to make the best technologies accessible also for renovations.
The renovations we carried out (through the 110% scheme and other incentives) have, in most cases, brought homes from the 1950s and 60s – starting from class G up to class A, with new windows, insulation, and a series of maintenance interventions.
We can do it, but it’s clear that adopting green materials and technologies is extremely expensive.