A woman from California bought 3 abandoned houses in a Sicilian village for $3.30, taking advantage of Italy's obscurity to combat the depopulation of towns.

Rubia Daniels went to the town of Mussomeli in Sicily after hearing about its cheap houses. In the end, she bought 3 crumbling houses for $3.30 in 2019, and she is currently restoring them. Many Italian towns are implementing similar programs in an effort to populate rural Italy.

When Rubia Daniels first heard about cheap houses in Italy, she knew she had to see them for herself. "I was so surprised. It's one of those things you have to see to believe it's true," Daniels told Insider. "I did some research, and within three days, I had a plane ticket, a rental car, a hotel, and I was off."

At the end of a 10-day trip to Mussomeli, a small town in Sicily, in July 2019, she became the proud owner of three dilapidated houses, which she bought for just 1 euro or 1.10 dollars each. A representative from the organization Case 1 Euro, responsible for the housing project in Mussomeli, confirmed the sales.

Rubia Daniels, who moved to California from a suburb of Brazil 30 years ago, said that the Italian city reminded her of her childhood home. "The people were very welcoming, and everyone wanted to have coffee with me. The realtors treated me like a sister - they were with me every day while I was there," Daniels said.

She was enchanted by the rich history of the city and its inhabitants, and she liked the idea of restoring the abandoned house. "It's an ecological concept," added Daniels, who works in solar energy. "We need to stop building and start repairing what we already have."

Daniels said that she had different plans for each of her new homes. "The one I'm currently working on, I plan to turn into an art gallery.

A 49-year-old woman began restoring her homes at the end of 2019, but had to pause the project due to the pandemic. "COVID-19 happened, and we weren't allowed to return, so I started the renovations again last year," Daniels said. She splits her time between San Francisco and Mussomeli, spending at least a month in the Italian village each time she goes there.

She said that she has finished the exterior finishing of two houses, but hasn't started the last one yet.

Italy is desperately in need of people like Daniels. Daniels is not the only one who has taken advantage of Italy's desperation regarding the settlement of its vacant, sleepy towns. In 2021, nine villages in southern Italy offered to pay young people $33,000 to move there and help revive the rapidly depopulating towns. The villages, all located in the southern Italian region of Calabria, offered financial incentives for relocation to individuals under 40. Among the towns listed were the cliffside village of Civita and the coastal town of Aieta. All these places shared a common trait - they had populations of less than 2,000, and in a few years, they could become ghost towns.

The Calabria region also attracted attention in the summer of 2020 when it offered houses for $1.14 in the village of Cinquefrondi. Twelve houses were put up for sale at this price in an attempt to quickly populate the town, which was dubbed "Operation Beauty." In 2019, Will Martin from Insider reported on Campobello di Mazara - a town in central Sicily that was giving away houses for free to anyone who wanted to live there. The town's mayor, Vincenzo Giambrone, stated that this was part of efforts to prevent the town from turning "into ruins."

However, acquiring a house for 1 dollar is not an easy task. As Tom Murray from Insider reports, the issue is that the house may be in complete disrepair and require extensive renovations to make it livable.