Italian ‘take one migrant home for free’ initiative turned out to be a major flop, as only three families expressed willingness to join the scheme over a three-month period. The programme was launched by Refugees Welcome Italia, an Italian NGO promoting the ‘social inclusion’ of migrants through family-based hosting and mentoring initiatives, and aimed to find residents of Rome willing to host migrants with valid residence permits in their homes free of charge.
However, as reported by Fratelli d’Italia (FdI) councillor Mariacristina Masi, there was little appetite among Romans to take migrants into their own homes. ‘Meetings are taking place, monitoring is in place. But the central issue is another one. In our view, the service is not producing the main result for which it was designed, namely the concrete activation of new family-hosting arrangements,’ Masi stated after requesting access to reports concerning the operator’s activities between January and March 2026.
This was a scenario critics had predicted from the outset, ever since the municipality launched a €399,000 tender to find an organization willing to persuade citizens to provide food and accommodation ‘to individual migrants and/or family or single-parent migrant households’.
Beyond the already existing—and mostly negative—experiences many Romans associate with migration, what appears to have discouraged participation most was the fact that host families were offered no reimbursement or financial support whatsoever.
‘While thousands of Romans are facing a housing emergency, the left continues with naïve policies that attract uncontrolled immigration and produce decay, theft, and insecurity,’ League group leader in the Rome City Council Fabrizio Santori argued.
Despite concerns that the initiative was destined to fail from the beginning, the city administration led by left-wing mayor Roberto Gualtieri awarded the contract to Refugees Welcome Italia in December 2025.
‘Investing resources in an external organization without providing adequate support mechanisms for host families risked—and is now proving—to be an ineffective choice,’ Masi said, adding that the scale of the tender had clearly implied expectations of far more substantial results.
‘Faced with such significant resources, one would expect a substantial increase in host families and activated cohabitation arrangements. Instead, the current data show an extremely limited impact,’ she stressed, noting that the programme is scheduled to continue until 31 December 2028.
The initiative also drew sharp criticism online from citizens who argued that many Italians are already struggling financially themselves. ‘People can barely make it to the end of the month, let alone host migrants in their homes for free. It’s science fiction,’ one user wrote. Another added that the municipality ‘needs to return to reality,’ arguing that ‘people here no longer live peacefully.’
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