• The housing problem
  (1908-1922)
  
  
• Houses and Families
  (1923-1945)
  
  
• Researching and experimenting
  (1946-1963)
  
  
• Beyond the city
  (1964-1993)
  
  
• Renewal and requalification
  (1994-2008)
  
  
• Future scenarios

PRESENTATION

Renovating and changing a city is not merely an economic operation. It means investing in the citizens' quality of life. ALER has been doing this for the last one hundred years.
Indeed, ALER is one century old. A century marked by questions about the necessities of the citizens of Milan and its province, promptly followed by appropriate answers.
A commitment that ALER has always honoured.

Even today, the housing emergency constantly affects new categories of citizens. I am thinking in particular about young people, who are not able to meet the mortgage payments and very often don't even satisfy the requirements needed to apply for one, about the separated couples that find themselves with nowhere to live, about temporary workers and about foreign people. ALER meets all these necessities with the right projects in terms of contents and methodologies: projects that satisfy the basic need for a home, but are aware that it is not the only one. ALER knows that. This is an essential detail, since the quality of life of the citizens depends on a network of relations and services that their environment must provide. It means social housing and building and urbanistic plans not only designed to be lucrative, but that respect a certain quality standard and are effectively integrated and designed to mend the fractures within our society, re-harmonise the discontinuity of the outskirts of our cities and solve the problems of degradation and illegal occupation of buildings. ALER's policy, in line with the regional plan, is that of delivering social housing programmes and complex plans aimed at promoting an actual sustainable development for the region, in line with its historic and environmental identity, and able to generate a widespread social wealth. Nonetheless, even if this is the long-term goal, the attentive eye of the company based in viale Romagna never loses sight of the everyday reality, and always gives priority to the problems of security and assistance, in the framework of an egalitarian dialogue with the citizens.

Our mission is indeed that of building districts in which to live in harmony and dignity, in order to provide a house in a part of town and not in the desert of the outskirts. A challenge that ALER meets with projects (Rsa, the regional project for housing emergency, buildings rented for an amount fixed by the Municipality, renovation of lofts, temporary tenancy, university residencies) aimed at offering a targeted answer to the current demand. And all this wouldn't have been possible without the support of our personnel, who throughout the years has contributed greatly to the development of the Company.

I would therefore like to extend a warm thank you to all the directors, executives, middle management employees, officers, administrative personnel, workers and security personnel, who placed ALER Milan among the biggest building societies in Europe, with their hard work and professionalism. We have always been open to the collaboration with both the public sector and the private one, to the dialogue with citizens and their participation, in order to shape an ever-changing society. A city that is transforming, with an eye on the Expo 2015. As you would say: ALER, not only skyscrapers.

Loris Zaffra
President of ALER Milan