• After the Olympics, the Olympic Village will become a student residence spanning 105,000 square metres.
• Of the 1,700 beds, only 450 will have a subsidised rate.
• The Italian government has scaled back its target of 60,000 new student beds, originally planned for June 2026.

The largest subsidised student residence in Italy. After hosting the athletes of the Winter Games, this will be the future of the Olympic Village at the Scalo di Porta Romana in Milan. The site covers 105,000 square metres, of which, according to the current rendering, 40,000 square metres are green spaces with three sports courts for basketball and padel, pedestrian squares and cycle paths. The project took thirty months and involved the construction of six new residential buildings as well as the restoration of two historic structures: the former Squadra Rialzo, once dedicated to railway maintenance, and the former "Basilico" warehouse.

The entire building complex is zero-emissions. Specifically: the buildings are powered exclusively by renewable sources and use no fossil fuels; they are equipped with heat pumps, a 1-megawatt photovoltaic system, smart LED lighting, and rainwater recovery and reuse systems. The project thus forms part of the broader regeneration programme for disused railway yards, promoted by the Municipality of Milan as far back as 2017.

There is a controversy over the student residence's prices

The future student residence will have 1,700 beds in total, covering around 6 per cent of the housing needs of the city's students. However, the beds allocated through a ministerial tender will be few — around 450 — and the "subsidised" rate will be approximately 592 euros per month, totalling 7,000 euros per year, a figure that remains out of reach for a low-income family.

In the report published by Coima, the company that developed the project, the prices for the remaining beds were also specified. A single room will cost 1,065 euros per month, while a double room will cost 739 euros per person, with services (such as utilities, weekly cleaning and concierge) included. The overall average will be 864 euros per month, which, as the Coima report notes, is around 25 per cent below the market average for student residences in Milan. In addition, alongside the student residences, a further 220 apartments will be built under subsidised housing schemes (meaning that the rates are the subject of an agreement between a private party and a public body) and 100 social housing apartments. Here too, prices do not seem particularly low: the new homes will be rented or sold at 3,800 euros per square metre, in line with market prices in the Ripamonti area (from 3,817 to 5,400 euros per square metre).

University housing is in a state of emergency

The issue of student accommodation truly came to a head in 2023, when a student at the Politecnico di Milano pitched a tent in the gardens of Piazza Leonardo da Vinci, in front of the university, sparking a mobilisation that lasted months and spread to various Italian cities. From that moment on, students spoke with one voice: more affordable rents for everyone. Yet no significant improvements have followed. On the contrary, in 2025, against a backdrop of stable demand, the prices of single rooms rose by an average of around 150 euros, with Milan itself leading the way. The vertiginous rise in housing prices has been widely debated, and the reasons are always the same. The proliferation of short-term rentals, which removes homes from the market for students and affects the historic centres of cities (even if, following Florence in 2023, restrictions have increased); the imbalance between high demand and scarce availability of housing, with the resulting property speculation; and, finally, the shortage of public housing.
On the subject of public housing, in 2024 the Ministry of University under the Meloni government directed 1.2 billion euros of PNRR funds towards the creation of 60,000 beds. However, the plan has recently been scaled back: the target for June 2026 has been reduced to 30,000.