With thousands left homeless after Italy's earthquake, authorities are debating how to provide warmer, sturdier housing for them besides the rows of emergency blue tents set up in the Apennine Mountains, where even summer nights can get chilly.

Nearly 2,700 people needing shelter following the Aug. 24 temblor are staying in 58 tent camps or other shelters arranged by Italy's Civil Protection agency. Others are staying in a gym in the hardest-hit town, Amatrice, while others, fearful of looting, are often sleeping in cars near their damaged homes.

Italy's lobbying group for farmers, Coldiretti, said Monday that farm animals, most of them sheep and cows, also need warm shelters at night, since 90 percent of the stalls or barns have been damaged in the Amatrice area.

Italian architect Renzo Piano met Premier Matteo Renzi on Sunday. Speaking in an interview Sunday in Corriere della Sera newspaper, Piano proposed building temporary wooden homes near the three devastated towns in central Italy so that traumatized people could stay near their roots.

No housing decisions have been announced, and details of Renzi's meeting with Piano weren't immediately known.

The death toll Monday stood at 290. Authorities are using bulldozers with high crane-style arms to tear down some of the most dangerous building overhangs in Amatrice.