Although the centrality of housing policies is recently and forcibly coming back to the attention of administrators and planners, the last decade has seen the emergence and spread of predatory attitudes which have progressively removed hundreds and hundreds of dwellings from their residential function, Undermining the principles of urban welfare with social repercussions that acquire intensity and unprecedented perspectives: more and more emerging population groups escape the emergency!

It becomes fundamental to develop, innovating, the public emergency and/ or assistance approach to the home theme – the house as “right for those who do not have access to the free market” – towards social housing, or a housing welfare policy focused on the affordable – in the sense of accessible, sustainable, reliable, efficient and advantageous – housing that develops the house in the living, or a supply chain of services that integrate the urban dimensions of living, welfare and culture: in 2 words urban housing.

This is the vision of HEROES, proposed at the Interreg 2024 call and promoted by the Tuscany Region in partnership with the Tuscan Housing Fund and the DIDA Department of the University of Florence: building a fair and sustainable city through cohesive communities, using social housing as a way of flight and allowing to decline and make possible also in our country the housing continuum, supporting and supporting the temporaneity of public residential construction and residential projects of first reception, transition, living in solidarity and supported.

The care of cities cannot be separated from the dwelling, social housing must become practice of urban planning as well as urban housing can become practice within the planning and programming of public administrations.