Implementing the Right to Housing | 30th June 2020

Europe is going through a trauma which is revealing the strengths and weakness of our societies. Following the Covid crisis, we will have to face with increased unemployment, poverty, housing exclusion and homelessness. In this challenging context, the gap between the proclamation of the right to housing in the European Pillar of Social Rights and the reality of access to affordable and quality housing for those in need has never seemed so wide. 

And yet cities and providers of social and public housing are in the front line, delivering housing for the most vulnerable and many essential workers (teachers, nurses, police force, etc.), which are key for the daily urban life, but even more crucially in times of crisis. How to face this growing demand for protection and how can the EU support social investment in cities and providers of social, public and cooperative housing ? At a time when the European Parliament is preparing a report on access to affordable housing for all, those are the challenges that policy makers will have to tackle.

We were joined by Laurent Ghekiere, Chair of the Housing Europe Observatory, AVS Director-General Maria Montes Miguel, the Director of FEANTSA Freek Spinnewij and Silvia Ganzerla - Policy Director of EUROCITIES.

What can the EU do to help to make the Right to Housing real by supporting these providers? We have gathered some ideas. Find them here. 

KEY QUESTIONS

• Which strategies can cities develop in the post-Covid times in order to prevent the rising housing inequalities, housing exclusion and homelessness?
   
• What kind of the support can the EU provide, either as part of the EU recovery
  package or within the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights to cities and providers of social, cooperative and public housing?
   
• How can investment in social infrastructures such as public and social housing be a push for more sustainable cities?