Bari

Italian housing cooperatives come in two forms, and the difference decides everything. In a cooperativa a proprietà divisa (divided ownership), members pool savings to build at cost and then take title to their own flats. The cooperative dissolves into a condominium. In a cooperativa a proprietà indivisa (undivided ownership), the building stays with the cooperative for good. Members pay a social share and a use charge, and the home is never resold on the market. Legacoop, the national league of cooperatives, counts over 330,000 homes built in divided ownership against about 40,000 undivided, most of them in the north. A scoping review of cooperative housing models shows why that split matters: only the undivided form keeps homes out of the market after the first generation.

Bari’s cooperatives grew up with the post-war city, and almost all of them chose ownership. The 1962 law on public building land, known by its number as the “167”, let councils expropriate areas and hand plots to public bodies and cooperatives. Bari’s planners laid out whole quarters this way. In Japigia, the high-density zones along via Caldarola date from the 1960s, and one of them, “zona 45”, is mainly cooperative and public. Poggiofranco has its own “167” quarter of the same vintage. Nationally, 47% of undivided cooperative homes date from those decades. In Bari, though, the flats mostly passed to their members, which is why they now count as owner-occupied.

What remains today is a small and scattered sector. Legacoop Puglia, the regional federation, is based in Bari. In its housing league Puglia counted 60 active housing cooperatives in 2015, fourth among Italy’s regions, yet their combined output that year was only €14.1 million. Three clusters stand out, and they face different problems. The old building cooperatives are mostly dormant once their flats are handed over. Social cooperatives, which Italy licenses to deliver care and inclusion, now run small housing projects such as co-housing for older people. A third cluster is only a legal frame so far: Puglia’s 2014 law on community cooperatives, which lets residents run shared services and assets together. The builders lack land and finance; the social co-ops lack capital; the community co-ops lack a housing track record. A study of housing cooperatives across Europe shows how far that sits from the continent’s large rental sectors.

Public policy has not yet given cooperatives a defined role. Puglia’s 2014 reform of public and social housing turned the old IACP of Bari into ARCA Puglia Centrale and made the agency the main vehicle. New affordable supply in Bari is being framed as ERP plus ERS, delivered by ARCA, the Comune and investment funds. Cooperatives appear in neither the city’s protocol nor its programmes. The international record on land leases and public guarantees suggests what a cooperative track could look like. Whether Bari opens one depends on choices being made now at three levels of government.

Rome sets the frame. The government’s Piano Casa, first announced in a Council of Ministers communiqué, became Law 116 of 2 July 2026. It aims to make about 100,000 homes available in ten years and commits €970 million for 2026–2030 to bringing empty public flats back into use through Invitalia, the state development agency. The Senate passed it by 106 votes to 62. Tenant unions called it inadequate to the emergency. The same government has not refinanced the national rent-support fund since the 2023 budget. Bari filled part of the hole from its own budget, with €3.6 million for 2,172 families.

The region holds the rules for short lets and public housing. Antonio Decaro, Bari’s mayor for a decade, became President of Puglia in November 2025. His administration sent a bill to the regional council that lets provincial capitals and high-tourism towns cap new tourist lets by zone, in a region with almost 45,000 active units. Owners letting up to two homes are exempt. Separately, the council voted that short lets running without a permit must register by 31 December 2026. Since 2025 every Italian short let also needs a national identification code, the CIN. Researchers on how EU states regulate short lets note that such codes matter only if platforms share their data.

In the city, Vito Leccese won the mayoralty in June 2024 with 70.27% of the vote and created an assessor for ERP and the housing emergency, Nicola Grasso. Their main instrument is a protocol with ARCA Puglia Centrale covering about 10,000 public homes and over €250 million of programmed works. It includes €59.3 million for about 1,000 flats in Madonnella and San Paolo and new building in Mungivacca and San Girolamo. The Comune also runs an Agenzia sociale per la Casa, a social lettings agency that brokers private flats to low-income tenants, with €5 million of EU metropolitan funds. Grasso has asked Rome and the regions for more, joining other cities in a municipal alliance on the national plan. There is still no concept-led land tender, no ground-lease pact and no funding line for cooperatives.

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The empty homes have a partial answer. The Comune is designing a guarantee fund to coax owners back to the long-term market, alongside tax incentives for agreed-rent leases. Conversion comes next. In September 2026 the council decided to turn an unfinished student residence in Mungivacca into public and social homes. The broader toolkit is familiar from comparative work on vacant housing: registers, taxes and brokered leases. Bari has used the last of these, but not yet the first two.

Climate goals arrive mostly through the public stock. ARCA has won PNRR money, Italy’s share of the EU recovery fund, to retrofit 1,474 public homes. It also borrowed €10 million from Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, the state lender, under an EU InvestEU guarantee, within a €180 million three-year plan. Land is the harder limit. Bari has sealed 43.34% of its soil, the highest share in Puglia, which makes reuse of built space the only growth path that fits. Leccese’s Costa Sud plan promises a 6 km coastal park with building volumes cut by half. A Housing Europe review of climate adaptation in public and cooperative housing warns that southern stock faces the steepest heat risk.

Nodo Verde, the park planned over the rail yards at Bari Centrale, is the city’s showcase. It was picked as one of eight national pilots under PINQuA, the national programme for housing quality. The project carries €100 million. Of that, €3.4 million goes to the old canteen of the ex-Caserma Rossani, a barracks becoming a house for local associations. Part of the barracks was already a park. In 2017 residents turned it into Parco Gargasole. Sarah Gainsforth’s critique of Bari’s regeneration in Internazionale pointed out the imbalance. The two PINQuA projects in the public estates of San Pio and Santa Rita received €15 million each, a fraction of the station’s share.

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ARCA Puglia Centrale is the city’s largest landlord and its most stretched. Across the provinces of Bari and Barletta-Andria-Trani it owns 20,804 homes. A study of how Apulia’s five public-housing agencies manage their stock found ageing buildings, fragmented processes and outdated systems. Its PNRR retrofit and the barrier-removal loan are real progress. But with a third of tenants paying a token rent, its head says maintenance cannot be funded from income alone.

The Mungivacca conversion shows how slowly empty space returns to use. A student residence was planned there in 2001 and left as a shell. In September 2026 the council agreed to finish it as 100 homes, half public and half social rent. The social half is meant for young couples and single-earner households who fall between the ERP list and the market. The work still has to be tendered and built. Research on what adaptive reuse can deliver for housing suggests conversions of this kind rarely move fast.

Bari Social Housing in Torricella was the city’s first fund-built estate of capped-rent homes. Fondo Esperia, managed by Fabrica Immobiliare SGR, let 226 flats from €240 a month to households earning up to €45,779. It proved that ERS can work in Bari. It also sits on the provincial road to Santo Spirito, far from the centre, and no second estate has followed.

G124, the peripheries group founded by the architect and life senator Renzo Piano, chose San Paolo in 2022. San Paolo is the public-housing district where nearly half of households do not own their home. Four young graduates of the Politecnico di Bari worked with residents on reclaiming a neglected area, funded by €30,000 in grants. The scale was modest. The method, co-design with tenants on public land, echoes the community-driven adaptive reuse that European research treats as a model. At the Politecnico, Carla Chiarantoni has written on social housing as a response to housing need in the region.

The ex-Liceo Socrate is the counter-example. A group of refugees occupied the empty school in 2010 and made it a home. A 2014 agreement promised refurbishment with EU funds, and years later nothing had been done. Smaller experiments point elsewhere. CondiViviamo, a co-housing project for over-65s supported by the Comune, is run by a social cooperative. Along the seafront, the site of the demolished Punta Perotti towers is now open ground by the sea. Bari’s lighthouse is still being built.