The Social Manager as a key player in the Social Housing Communities

In Italy, in the real estate branch of social housing funds, there is a key player guarantor in fact of the service of general interest, both of sustainable development and social inclusion: the Social Manager. According to reduce the gap among the housing policy, the impact financing and the community of inhabitants, the Social Manager has made its mark as a strategic partner for designing and managing the infrastructure of social welfare. The social housing management enterprises come from the long tradition of Housing Cooperatives: in the last decade to reduce the competition with the social housing funds, some Housing Cooperatives have been started to be the incubators of new model of Cooperatives Enterprises, specialised in building, facility and community management. In the current model of public-private-partnership for delivering social housing, we observe that the Social Manager is leading new models of strong and collaborative housing communities through asset and Social Management; it could be considered as the guarantee of the Services of General Interest; it is more and more the key element for the de-risking strategy of social housing investments. In this paper we will present the first result of the research "The Cooperative Social Manager, infrastructure for social housing" promoted by Politecnico di Milano and Legacoop Abitanti and we describe how the social housing management enterprises could represent the driver of social innovation and of inclusive growth in the regeneration of built environment.