- Rubia Daniels flew to the city of Mussomeli in Sicily after listening to about its low cost houses.
- She ended up shopping for three crumbling homes for $3.30 in 2019, and he or she’s restoring them now.
- Many Italian cities have launched related schemes in an try to repopulate rural Italy.
When Rubia Daniels first heard about Italy’s low cost homes, she knew she had to check out them herself.
“I used to be so amazed. It was a kind of issues the place you need to see it to ensure it is true,” San Francisco-based Daniels instructed Insider. “I did my analysis, and inside three days I had my aircraft ticket, a rental automobile, the lodge, and I left.”
By the tip of a 10-day journey to Mussomeli, a small city in Sicily, in July 2019, she was the proud proprietor of three dilapidated houses that she purchased for simply €1, or $1.10, every.
A consultant from Case 1 Euro, the group liable for the housing undertaking in Mussomeli, confirmed the gross sales.
Rubia Daniels.
Daniels, who moved from the outskirts of Brasilia in Brazil to California 30 years in the past, stated the Italian city reminded her of her childhood house.
“Folks have been tremendous welcoming and everybody needed to have a espresso with me. The realtors embraced me like a sister — they have been with me each single day via the time I used to be there,” Daniels stated.
Not solely was she charmed by the wealthy historical past of the city and its inhabitants, she additionally beloved the concept of restoring an deserted house.
Rubia Daniels.
“It is an environmental idea,” Daniels, who works within the photo voltaic business, added. “We have to cease constructing and begin transforming the present issues that we’ve.”
Daniels stated she has totally different plans for every of her new homes.
“The one which I am engaged on it now, I am planning to show into an artwork gallery. One shall be for me to remain. And the third home, which shall be my largest undertaking, I need to convert right into a wellness middle to offer again to the neighborhood,” she added.
Rubia Daniels
The 49-year-old restarted restoring the properties in direction of the tip of 2019 however needed to pause the undertaking as a result of pandemic.
“COVID-19 occurred and we weren’t allowed to return, so I simply began renovations once more final yr,” Daniels stated. She at the moment splits her time between San Francisco and Mussomeli and spends not less than a month within the Italian village every time.
Thus far, she’s accomplished the exteriors of two homes however hasn’t began on the final one, she stated.
Italy is determined for individuals like Daniels
Daniels is not the one individual to leap on Italy’s desperation to repopulate its empty, sleepy cities.
In 2021, 9 villages in southern Italy supplied to pay millennials $33,000 to maneuver there so long as they assist to repopulate fast-emptying cities. The villages — all within the southern Italian area of Calabria — supplied individuals underneath age 40 a money fee to make the transfer. The cities on provide included the cliffside Civita village and Aieta, a coastal seaside city.
The one factor these locations had in frequent was that all of them had underneath 2,000 residents and have been mere years away from turning into ghost cities.
The area of Calabria additionally made the information in the summertime of 2020 when it supplied houses for $1.14 within the village of Cinquefrondi. Twelve homes have been placed on sale for that worth in a mad sprint to repopulate the city dubbed “Operation Magnificence.”
And in 2019, Insider’s Will Martin reported on Cammarata — a city in central Sicily making a gift of homes at no cost to anybody who needed to dwell there. This, in response to the city’s mayor, Vincenzo Giambrone, was a part of an effort to forestall the city from turning “right into a break.”
Nonetheless, it’s no imply feat to take over a $1 home. The catch, in response to Insider’s Tom Murray, includes coping with a house that may be in full disrepair and require in depth renovations simply to be habitable.
