Millions of Empty Homes. Nowhere to Rent for Six Months.
The real housing crisis isn’t Airbnb, but the disappearance of flexible housing. Anyone who has tried to live between cities in Italy knows the feeling.
Finding a place for a weekend is easy.
Finding a place for three months can be almost impossible.
This strange paradox has become increasingly visible in recent years, especially for remote workers, freelancers, consultants and people who simply want to spend some time living in a different place.
The difficulty is particularly surprising in a country that, on paper, should not have a housing shortage at all.
According to ISTAT, roughly 27% of Italian homes are empty or used only occasionally, which means between 9 and 10 million properties are not permanently inhabited. (Source: ISTAT Permanent Census of Population and Housing; ANSA analysis, 2024).
In other words, Italy is not a country that lacks homes.
It is a country where homes often remain unused.
And yet, at the same time, people looking for a place to live - even temporarily - often struggle to find one.
A system designed for another era
The Italian housing system is still largely structured around two models.
On one side there is tourism accommodation:
short stays, vacation rentals and weekend apartments.
On the other side there are traditional residential leases that often last several years and come with rigid contractual structures.
Between these two worlds lies a space that should logically exist but rarely does.
The space of temporary living.
Not tourism.
Not permanent relocation.
But the growing reality of modern life: staying somewhere for a few months.
This type of mobility has become increasingly common.
People move between projects, cities and countries more than they used to. Work patterns have changed. Remote work allows professionals to spend time in places that were once considered only holiday destinations.
Italy, with its small towns, landscapes and historic villages, should theoretically be one of the most attractive places in Europe for this kind of living.
Yet the housing system struggles to support it.
The hidden difficulty of flexible housing
The reason is not only regulatory but also operational.
Managing a home that can be rented flexibly - sometimes for tourism, sometimes for several months, sometimes for longer stays - requires organization, local support and knowledge of different rules.
For most individual property owners this level of complexity is difficult to manage.
As a result, many homes simply remain closed.
Meanwhile, those who renovate properties in small towns often focus on short-term tourism rentals because they appear easier to control and more predictable.
The result is a strange imbalance: houses exist, but they are rarely available in the format that many people actually need.
A new approach emerging from small towns
In recent years, some initiatives working on rural regeneration have started to experiment with different solutions.
Among them is ITS ITALY, which has long been involved in projects aimed at revitalizing small Italian municipalities and attracting new residents to internal areas.
Together with partners and communities connected to Smart Working Magazine, ITS Journal and Nomag, the organization has started developing a model that includes hybrid housing structures designed for stays of several months.
The idea is simple but potentially transformative.
Instead of asking people to immediately buy and renovate a house - something that often turns into a complicated and expensive process - these structures offer homes that are already ready to live in.
For many international residents or remote professionals, purchasing a property in a small Italian town without knowing the place can quickly become a complex adventure.
Unexpected renovation costs, administrative delays and bureaucratic procedures can easily turn what seemed like a dream into a long and costly process.
Providing ready-to-live housing for several months offers a different path.
It allows people to experience a community first - to understand whether it is truly a place where they want to live - before making larger investments.
In that sense, temporary living may not only solve a housing problem.
It may also become a gateway to a new form of residency in Italy’s smaller towns.
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