Indicator history

From local and national researches emerges that immigrants seeking a house to rent often find themselves having to come to terms with particular forms of discrimination arising exclusively from their being foreigners. Some landlords renting houses to foreigners demand an additional fee and, in many cases, also request legally established immigrants to sign a bank security. Furthermore, especially in large cities, the rent requested from immigrants is generally provisional and is paid per person instead of per square metre. House-owners refuse to rent to foreigners without adequate guarantees. Having finally overcome the cliché of immigrants being dirty and delinquent, other dividing walls have been erected that exclude access to foreigners: unreliability, the number of members forming the family unit, different habits and time-tables, fear of terrorism. An immigrant searching for a house has become a business target: the only houses sold or rented to immigrants are the left-overs of the housing stock, the “substandard” houses discarded by the market. Even real-estate agenzie take advantage of the situation by frequently asking for sizable amounts for their intermediation in looking for an apartment that will never actually materialize and by refusing to reimburse the amounts paid. Lastly, legally established immigrants who have obtained a steady job and an acceptable level of disposable income and now want to take out a loan in order to purchase a house, come up against the rigidities of the banking world. Foreigners are often thought to be unreliable: the fear that they might leave Italy without having paid up their mortgage rates makes banks very reluctant to grant them the requested loan.

Source:

Censis, Housing Policies and Services for Immigrants in Italy, Summary, 2005 - http://www.lavoro.gov.it/NR/rdonlyres/B8B67F21-06AD-4041-BF9C-5CCF586285AE/0/Rapportomonitoraggiopoliticheabitativeinlinguainglese.pd