La nuova emergenza abitativa a Palermo tra edifici inutilizzati e persone senza dimora

The paper highlights that, in Italy as well as in Sicily, the increase of unutilized residential building stock does not correspond to suitable public policies to solve residential emergency for people who lives in absolute or relative poverty. The difficulty to apprise the number of persons who lives without proper house is coupled by the absence of policy in the public housing sector, engendered by national austerity programs and by a series of structural socio-economic changings, which imply a revision of the urban welfare policies and the modes to intervene.The case of Palermo exemplary shows the emergency situation of the great Sicilian urban areas, both under the profile of the worsening phenomena of material and residential deprivation, which are now extended to new population brackets, and under the profile of the ambiguity represented by the illegal practices of public and unutilized buildings occupation. If illegal or illicit practices can be correlated with the claim of a right, from the other hand informal practices of self-building can be considered as a reason for reflecting on insurgent city concept and capability approach, useful to contrast exclusion and to improve the habitability of public city.