Homes4All is an impact finance project to tackle the housing emergency in Turin promoted by the City of Turin together with the Chamber of commerce of Turin, Brainscapital s.r.l., Homers s.r.l Società Benefit, Associazione ACMOS.

As part of the first phase of the project (feasibility study), the Competence Centre for Social Impact Measurement, through the Chamber of Commerce, worked on defining the intervention and the public-private partnership, on a pay by result basis. This formula envisages the collection and use of capital from private investors (e.g. banking foundations), whose investment is remunerated by the public administration if the expected impact is achieved, thus freeing the initiative from the exclusive support of non-reimbursable public contributions, favouring greater economic sustainability.

Following an analysis of best practices aimed at responding to the housing emergency, some of which are based on pay by result systems, the Centre has developed the most suitable model for the Homes4all project, capable of integrating experience and public support with the desire to attract capital from private investors interested in both economic dividends and generating social impact.
The project is based on a collaboration between the City of Turin, engaged in the identification of beneficiaries, and private entities (Brainscapital s.r.l Società. Benefit, Homers s.r.l Società Benefit, Associazione ACMOS) responsible for collecting private resources (social impact investments) and for structuring and providing the housing support service. In the testing phase of the project, the City of Turin is involved as a support, both through its services against housing marginality already active, and by supporting economically the service activated by Homes4all after a positive evaluation of the generated impact.

The Chamber of commerce, through the Competence Centre, accompanied the project stakeholders in the definition of the outcome contracting mechanism.

As part of the process, the Centre worked on the measurement model, defining the impacts that can be generated by the project and identifying intermediate results (and related indicators), then anchoring the management system of public resources to their achievement, in order to ensure efficient spending and maximise social returns.
Using the value chain, the positive changes and additionality of the project were identified, identifying both cashable outcomes such as the savings of the administration on housing services expenditure, and linked to the social dimension of the recipients, such as the improvement of the well-being of individuals or families.
The mechanism developed is modular; the payment by the City of Turin to the service provider is in fact linked to the achievement of the intermediate and final results identified, varies according to the beneficiaries, is progressive over three years and is proportional to the share of final results achieved.
The challenge in the construction of a hybrid model that links a PBR financing mechanism to both cost-saving outcomes for the public administration and social outcomes linked to the beneficiaries, was to achieve a balance between the different requests made by the subjects (public and private), align and integrate the different objectives by defining balanced project results within the partnership. The commitment in defining such a model of collaboration also lies in the ability to build a governance that guarantees a balance between the interests and results expected by the various stakeholders and prevents the generation of distorting phenomena such as the choice of easily measurable outcomes that are not representative of the actual expected impact.

Thus set up, the outcome contracting mechanism allows:

• the involvement of private actors in high social impact interventions;
• innovative forms of public-private collaboration that represent an opportunity for capacity building for the various actors involved, also thanks to the effort to align public and private objectives;
• a synergy between actors (public and private) linked to risk sharing;
• the efficiency of public spending;
• consistency with expected impact results and reduction of mission drift.

The setting up of a monitoring and measurement model of intermediate and final results is central to this mechanism and highlights the importance of data and its management both among the actors of the partnership and between the different levels within the individual organisations (public/private bodies).
The preliminary phase (feasibility study) of the Homes4all project, in which the activity of the Competence Centre is embedded, has been completed. For more information about the project and the initiatives undertaken, please visit the website.

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