While the national mobilization of university students against the expensive rents spreads like wildfire involving rectors, administrations and regions, Minister Valditara attacks the left-wing mayors and is immediately a political clash.

To trigger the controversy is the attack that the minister reserves the juntas that, he claims, "have not activated policies for the residences of young people".

From Florence, Nardella replies by saying that "there is no limit to shame", and asks where the minister was "while his government voted in December the cancellation of the national rent fund". From Milan, Sala indicates two possibilities: "either it is a joke (which has also failed badly) he says, or, if it is the result of reflection, I believe that with this statement the minister illuminates the country with respect to what he is". From Bologna, Lepore considers the minister "quite uninformed", and urges a national housing plan.

Meanwhile, in support of the protesting students, CGIL and Sunia, the main tenants' organization, take the field.

"We support the national mobilization of students, launched by the Union of University Students, who with the slogan 'Homeless, without a future' demand answers from the Government on the housing crisis, and we denounce the serious condition of the rental market", they say, in a note.

CGIL and Sunia then recall how in Italy "students who reside in a different province and in any case more than 100 km away from the place of study, the so-called off-site, are more than 750,000 to whom the system of right to public study provides about 39,000 beds that manage to protect 5.2% of those entitled".

"An alarming fact - underline CGIL and Sunia - which highlights the culpable absence of national legislative, economic and fiscal measures, aimed at guaranteeing the right to housing as an integral part of the infrastructure of the right to education and therefore, as such, a constitutionally protected right. The scarcity of beds inevitably pushes students and their families to find housing in the free market, a market 'distorted' and characterized by speculative forms, tax avoidance and evasion".

"The Istat data show a dramatic situation - continues the union - the prices of single rooms have increased by 11 percentage points compared to 2021, and by 13 points compared to 2022 up to reach an average monthly cost of 539 euros and annual of 6468.00 euros with maximum peaks in large cities such as Milan, Padua, Rome, Florence and Bologna, which reached monthly rents of up to 700 euros per month; city where, moreover, about a quarter of the total number of Italian off-site is concentrated''.

"In addition to these costs - add CGIL and Sunia - unsustainable for families and students affected by the effects of the pandemic crisis, we must add the ancillary expenses - condominium, waste tax and various utilities - which have suffered strong increases. At the moment, renting your home to tourists through online platforms appears much more convenient economically and with less risk, also thanks to a law system on residential leases that favors short term rentals with important tax relief".

For CGIL and Sunia "we need a new policy and an overall project of the right to study, within which forms of housing support for off-site students must also be identified, otherwise the very concept of student mobility risks disappearing in our country, further blocking its possibilities for development and social evolution. Government, Regions and Municipalities must intervene. The PNR funds are not going in the direction of significantly favoring the right to education, but above all they are directed towards the private sector and the free market".

"It is necessary to establish funds in favor of the Municipalities to co-finance the purchase and renovation of housing, starting from the unsold assets of social security institutions, public and private companies that have failed, from assets confiscated from the mafia, a cultural battle as well as a dispute. There is a need - they conclude - to build and implement a welfare that is measured with the changed social and economic structure of the cities and with the many aspects of the new poverty and with the new inequalities".