Rent Crunch: Unifi Puts Up €1 Million. But What Does It Cost to Live and Study in Florence Today?

One million euros. That is how much the University of Florence has decided to put on the table, out of its own budget, to ease one of the heaviest costs in the life of students who move to the city from elsewhere: rent.

The university has published a call for refunds of rent paid during the 2025/2026 academic year. The grant is open to out-of-town students with an ISEE (Italy’s means-tested household wealth indicator) of up to €40,000, and the amount will vary by income bracket. Applications can be submitted until October 7, 2026.

But perhaps the most significant thing about the measure is where the money comes from: that million euros comes straight out of the University of Florence’s own resources.

One million euros of its own money

This is not simply a ministry fund being passed along. Unifi’s grant is designed as a supplement to the tools already provided by the Ministry of University and Research, which supports students with an ISEE of up to €20,000, and to the programs run by the regional right-to-study agencies for students with a low ISEE. The university is choosing to step in directly, raising the ISEE threshold to €40,000 and widening the pool of people who can get help.

To qualify, students must have been regularly enrolled in a bachelor’s or master’s degree program at the university in the 2025/2026 academic year, no more than one year past the standard length of their program, be up to date with their tuition fees and meet the academic merit requirements set out in the call. They must also be resident outside the provinces of Florence, Prato and Pistoia and hold a properly registered lease. Students who have already received similar public grants for the same rent payments are not eligible.

What’s more, the university does not intend this to be a one-off. “The high cost of rent is today one of the main obstacles to accessing and continuing university studies, especially in certain urban settings, and it increasingly affects middle-income families as well,” explained rector Alessandra Petrucci as she announced the call. The stated goal is to make the measure permanent and offer it again in the coming academic years.

When rent can decide whether students choose Florence

The university’s decision comes in a city where the housing problem has grown far beyond the academic world. Back on January 31, rector Alessandra Petrucci had spoken out publicly on the issue, calling it a problem that is “real and must be tackled urgently”.

The rector’s point was very clear: the cost of rent risks undermining a student’s very ability to choose Florence as a university city.

Petrucci also linked the housing crisis to the heavy pressure from the short-term vacation rental market, which shrinks the supply of homes available to students and residents. At the same time, she pointed to the university’s work with local and regional institutions to add beds and test new housing solutions, including through PNRR funds (Italy’s post-pandemic National Recovery and Resilience Plan). But she also named the limits of what a single university can do: to really tackle the problem, Petrucci said, a shared, structural strategy is needed.

Florence is still Italy’s second most expensive city for rent

The numbers help explain the backdrop to this decision. In 2019, before the pandemic, the average asking rent for a home in Florence was €15.80 per square meter. In the years that followed, rents climbed until they peaked at €27 per square meter in July 2025.

Since then the market has started to cool. According to Idealista data, in August 2026 the average asking rent in Florence fell to €21.70 per square meter. That is noticeably lower than the highs reached in 2025, but still about 37% higher than in 2019.

In some parts of the city prices are even higher. In the historic center the average reaches €24.60 per square meter, while around Santa Maria Novella it climbs to €27.80 per square meter.

So the drop over the past year has to be read against the rise that came before it: rents have fallen from the record levels of 2025, but they remain far higher than seven years ago. And Florence, with an average of €21.70 per square meter, is still Italy’s second most expensive city for rent, after Milan.

The problem isn’t just rent

For a family supporting an out-of-town student, rent is only one of the expenses to budget for. In recent years the cost of living has gone up, utility bills have risen, and every other daily expense adds weight, from transportation to groceries.

Add to all this a rental market where prices in Florence today are noticeably higher than in 2019, and the overall bill can become hard to sustain.

And this is exactly where high rents risk shaping the choice of university too: for some families, sending a child to study in Florence can mean taking on a monthly cost that is simply too high.

A university city has to be a city people can live in

The million euros set aside by Unifi cannot solve Florence’s rent problem on its own: it depends on much broader dynamics and, as the rector herself stressed, calls for action shared with local and regional institutions. Still, it is significant that the university has chosen to step in with its own resources, adding this measure to the other forms of support that already exist.

Raising the ISEE limit to €40,000 also makes it possible to reach families who don’t fall within the brackets covered by other grants and who, at the same time, face an ever higher cost of keeping a child at university away from home.

Unifi’s stated goal is to make this measure permanent and offer it again in the coming academic years. It is support that goes straight to one of the expenses weighing most on the budgets of out-of-town students’ families, and one that, in Florence, has become harder and harder to bear in recent years.