Co-housing for Seniors in Rome: A “Extraordinary Opportunity” for the City
Rome, March 31, 2026 – A new proposal to rethink senior living in advanced age has emerged from Rome. This topic was discussed on March 30th at the Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone during the Co-Housing Festival, the first major Italian public event dedicated to new forms of shared living for seniors.
“We all,” stated Rome’s Mayor, Roberto Gualtieri, speaking at the event, “should see the challenge of co-housing as an extraordinary opportunity to implement a different model of conceiving the city.” He further emphasized: “Investing in co-housing saves the state money, enormously reducing the need for other, more expensive care and support methods.”
Funari: “We Give Voice to a Deep Need: Rethinking Living as Life Lengthens”
The Co-Housing Festival was promoted by the Department of Social Policies and Health and organized by Doc Servizi Soc. Coop. in partnership with Auser Lazio, Cooperativa Risvolti, and Cooperativa Prassi e Ricerca, with funding from the Pnrr – NextGenerationEU and the support of the Ministry of Labor and Social Policies.
Barbara Funari, the Councillor for Social Policies and Health, who opened the event, explained the need for and objective of the festival. “Today we are not just here to inaugurate a Festival, but to give voice to a profound need: to rethink living as life lengthens. Why a Co-Housing Festival? Because we needed a space to talk about these issues.”
Designing New Forms of Coexistence Together
Funari highlighted the clear data: “In Italy, there are almost 10 million people living alone, and, importantly, while over 65s number more than 3 million, the issue of loneliness is also significantly growing in the 45 to 64 age group. The most striking figure, according to Istat, is that almost 2 million people over 75 report feeling lonely often or always, meaning 1 in 5 has no one to talk to. Faced with this solitude, we cannot stand still, but must design new forms of coexistence together.”
She added: “Today our country also has a historic opportunity: Law 33 of March 23, 2023, on the reorganization of assistance for the elderly. A law that dedicates an article specifically to the topic of co-housing. And from here, we renew an invitation to the government to implement the law quickly.”
Restoring Community to the Elderly
Funari further specified: “As Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia reminds us, it is good that reflections expand to understand the urgency of a new culture on the subject. It is about overturning the paradigm ‘elderly = alone.’ Restoring community to the elderly, and why not, also to adults if they wish, represents a new key to positive transformation in our society. Every citizen of Rome has the right to live in their own home and neighborhood even in old age, rejecting forced institutionalization as the only possible choice. For this reason, we want to bring to the attention of public debate that alternatives exist. Rome Capital has already launched new co-housing and residential homes in recent years, where people live in a family-like, shared, protected environment.”
Co-housing: A Choice of Social and Cultural Innovation
The Councillor for Social Policies and Health of Rome Capital also emphasized: “Co-housing is not just a roof, but a choice of social and cultural innovation. And every innovation, to grow and structure itself, requires a change to be promoted among citizens, institutions, the third sector, associations, neighborhood committees, and all other forms of active citizenship. We must ask ourselves how we can age in large numbers, well, and never alone.”
She concluded: “Our commitment as an administration will be to move from analysis to practice, making the proximity network in our city real and visible. However, institutions alone are not enough if they are not animated by renewed shared responsibility. Each of us must feel a bit like a guardian of the well-being of others, because a city is not just made of streets and buildings, but also of relationships between the people who inhabit it. Let’s work together so that loneliness ceases to be an invisible emergency and becomes a commitment to build a city where people live better, together, and no longer alone.”
Gualtieri: “Co-housing is an Extraordinary Opportunity for the City”
Rome’s Mayor, Roberto Gualtieri, also participated in the Co-Housing Festival, explaining the significance of this new form of shared living for seniors for the city and highlighting the opportunities to be seized.
The Mayor first stated: “We should all see the challenge of co-housing not simply as a need to deal with a complicated phenomenon, a problem that exists and is very serious, but as an extraordinary opportunity to implement a different model of conceiving the city. The specific dimension of co-housing, which consists of people choosing to live together without being part of the same family unit, is a piece of the vision we are trying to implement of a city based more on the concept of proximity, closeness, between people and between the administration and citizens. This is a building block of our idea that we call the ’15-minute city,’ that is, a city where people are integrated into social, community, and service networks.”
Co-housing is an Investment
Gualtieri then explained: “More resources and a strong commitment are needed in what is not actually a waste of money, but an investment. Investing in co-housing saves the state money, enormously reducing the need for other care and support methods that are, even from the point of view of public finance, more expensive. We do not believe in this model only for accounting reasons, of costs and benefits; we consider the co-housing model an extraordinary opportunity to improve the quality of life not only of people, seniors, citizens who will decide to share a piece of their lives, but of the entire city.”
The Cultural, Social, Democratic, and Civil Opportunity of Co-housing
He added: “I think that a city model where people have the opportunity to share relationships, ideas, passions, and support not only gives something to those people who will no longer be alone, but improves the quality of life for all citizens, because in this way solid networks are built, the experience, intelligence, and wisdom of life that our elderly people have and of which we all have an extraordinary need are put into circulation. There is therefore also a cultural, social, democratic, and civil opportunity, as well as a great opportunity to make a leap in quality for our welfare and social policies.”
What is Co-housing?
Co-housing refers to a housing model that allows for the sharing of spaces and services, while maintaining one’s autonomy, but combating loneliness and social isolation. It is a form of cohabitation that aims to improve the quality of life and offer an alternative to lonely people who, especially as they get older (but not only), feel the need to face their existence in company, helping each other and warding off the specter of loneliness.
Source: idealista.it
