Bringing sector best practices to address the unregulated market and lack of green spaces in North Macedonia
What are the main concerns of tenants in the Balkan country?
Skopje, North Macedonia, 3 June 2024 | Published in Urban, Future of the EU & Housing
At the end of May, Margherita Marinelli, Junior Innovation and Project Officer at Housing Europe, flew to Skopje to join an event, organised by the Housing and Tenants Organisation and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, aimed at sparking public dialogue around issues and opportunities to improve the housing situation in North Macedonia.
After the collapse of Yugoslavia, 98% of the residential housing stock in North Macedonia was privatised, and homeownership became the most common tenure. Some recurrent issues that were addressed in discussions were the unregulated rental market and the risks faced by biodiversity as private developers profit from demolishing old buildings and reconstructing larger areas that do not leave room for urban green.
Housing Europe presented best practices from the public, cooperative, and social housing sector that show the way for affordable and decent home renovations to take place, many of them inspired by the work of the capacity building programme of the Affordable Housing Initiative. The need to establish a clear and fair framework around housing and the potential to lay the foundations of a renewed social housing system in the country were the core topics of the roundtable with the Regulatory Housing Commission that took place next to the festival.