The Housing Struggle in Milan in the 1970s: Influences and Particularities

Abstract

The article examines the housing occupation movements in Milan in 1969-1975, relating them to the restricted supply of cheap housing—a situation that created difficulties for newly arrived immigrant. Housing occupation activists were influenced by the experience of squatting in other European cities, a phenomenon that particularly fascinated the educated young, who participated in the movement, supported by organizations of the radical left. The movement’s political project was to take the class struggle outside the factories, to attack “urban income growth” as a tool of capitalist domination. Compared with other Italian experiences, there was less involvement from the underclass, and the aim of obtaining a house was secondary to the project of maintaining political conflict at a high level. The movement waned in the late 1970s, due to the fact that the revolutionary groups’ drive for political mobilization no longer coincided with the social housing needs of young people.