Housing
Drawing lessons from past experiences on how to more effectively uphold housing rights in the COVID-19 aftermath
Background
The COVID-19 pandemic has both exacerbated housing struggles, which include massive evictions, displacements and dispossession, and created new ones. In our current context, this session highlights the ‘right to adequate housing’ as the ‘right to life’, bringing together various stakeholders in order to generate a collective dialogue on the current challenges to housing rights and how past and present responses can contribute to upholding housing rights as a matter of social justice.
The increase of the financialization of housing and the intersection between climate change and housing rights has derived precariousness, which is now more visible than ever. This has resulted, firstly, in the emergence of a new wave of housing movements in several European and US countries, as well as a new era for housing movements in the Latin America and Asian regions in particular. Secondly, the right to adequate housing has been included as a key element in both the human rights and the local and regional government’s agenda.
Likewise, the effects caused on the inhabitants of the cities due to the COVID-19 pandemic, beyond the health and economic challenges, have enormously exacerbated pre-existing inequalities in terms of rights and access to housing. This challenging situation has shown us that many are being left behind, which has resulted in the frustration of social movements due to superficial reforms and the absence of real change. Another visible effect has been a language shift from a focus on rights to a focus on justice.
Now more than ever, the right to adequate housing and ensuring all populations’ access to home-based public services constitute a critical element in how we are able to collectively respond to the unprecedented challenges facing our societies.
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Challenges
- Firstly, it is essential to include housing rights in national recovery agendas and revamp housing as an agenda priority at the global level. Even though a number of projects have been implemented so far, they have been mainly carried out at the local level, mostly without local and regional governments having the competencies and resources they need for triggering larger-scale change. Therefore, it is necessary to transfer these initiatives to the regional and global level by expanding partnerships to influence policymaking.
- Furthermore, in order to implement measures to uphold housing rights, address homelessness, and prevent evictions, the lessons learned over the past years in various contexts will need to be taken into account.
- In turn, as a mechanism for advancing the right to adequate housing, the recognition of diverse collective processes of housing production will be a key element in addressing these concerns.
Learn more about the challenges being faced by cities and regions
Responses
Several responses and measures have been put into practice in order to respond to current needs.
- International federations of homeless people and slum dwellers, as well as women savings groups, have extensively worked on the finance of land through civil society initiatives in order to establish processes, mechanisms and techniques for access to land and thus, create a large-scale intervention. These learnings may well be considered in order to advance housing rights’ recognition worldwide.
- The Zimbabwe Land Rights Movement provided training to the community in urban and rural areas on their land and housing rights. This involved engaging different state actors and disseminating news and data on housing rights violations as a way of raising awareness among the population. Similarly, the Association des Amoureux du Livre pour le Développement Local worked on mobilization and training with communities and mapped the forced eviction cases.
- From the Spanish Platform for Mortgage Victims, the focus was on a lobbying strategy to empower and accompany people affected by evictions. To this end, putting pressure on the politicians and giving visibility to the movement was critical to identifying these problems. A successful example was the inclusion of the right to housing in the existing legislation in Catalonia. In a similar vein, Urbamonde has promoted the housing cooperative model, which consists of providing mutual aid so that communities participate in projects in order to build stronger communities.
- Networking and exchange programmes are very strong tools to jointly work in different areas of operation.
Learn more about other responses and initiatives in terms of Migration:
Towards the Pact
- Government should work closer to the ground, in alliance with civil and community-led society organizations, in order to find effective solutions for upholding housing rights.
- The governments’ approach has not moved far enough to contest housing unaffordability and advance a strategic, integrated vision that explores integral solutions to the diverse housing needs
- In order to create impact, social movements require to be combined “with the mobilization of public opinion, awareness-raising and important training, even towards the institutions”.
- The role of the public sector must be re-imagined and strengthened in a more participatory and inclusive manner.
- For the future, the efforts of the past and the initiatives that policy and planning have brought are crucial for securing the right to housing.
- It is of high importance to strengthen alliances as a critical aspect to move forward for the consolidation and emergence of multiple ways of upholding housing rights.
For further information on the topic of Public Service Delivery and its impact on cities and regions, please refer to the related resources included below.
- UCLG’s Live Learning Experience page
- Metropolis’ Cities for Global Health initiative
Frontliners
