Summer Colloquium 2013 Report

Where is housing in the future social contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them

Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them

Colloquium Rapporteur: Diane Diacon Editing: Michalis Goudis Visual Editor: Francesca Zaganelli

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

Access the report online at www.housingeurope.eu/uploads/file_/Leuven%20Colloquium%20Report_Full.pdf

Published in Brussels, October 2013

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Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them

Table of Contents Introduction 1. Raquel Rolnik, UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing Housing Commodification, Finance and the Right to Adequate Housing Reflections 1.1 Housing, market failure and the economic crisis 1.2 Home-ownership as a policy focus 1.3 Security of tenure and choice of housing 1.4 Housing affordability

2. Jean-Marie Jungblut, Research Officer, Living Conditions and Quality of Life Unit, European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Welfare in Europe after the Crisis: Rising inequalities or prospects for a better quality of work and life in Europe?

Reflections 2.1 Social housing policy directions 2.2 Evidence-based policy making 2.3 Welfare targeting and social segregation

3. Andreas RĂźdinger, Research Fellow, Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations Questioning the Green Economy Rationale Reflections 3.1 Transition to a green economy 3.2 How can social housing providers contribute to the transition?

3.3 Addressing energy poverty 3.4 The role of the city in the energy transition

4. Pierre Calame, Chairman, Charles LĂŠopold Mayer Foundation for Human Progress What is the future Oeconomy?

Reflections 4.1 Delivering change 4.2 A different view of growth 4.3 Involving citizens 5. Concluding statement by Karima Delli, MEP 6. Conclusions by Diane Diacon, Independent Housing Writer and Researcher and Colloquium Rapporteur

Appendix 1 Contributors to the CECODHAS Housing Europe Colloquium List of Figures

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Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them

Introduction CECODHAS Housing Europe is the European Federation of Public, Cooperative and Social Housing Providers - a network of 45 national and regional housing federations, whose members together account for 41,400 public, voluntary and cooperative housing providers in 19 countries. Altogether these providers manage over 27 million homes, about 12 per cent of existing dwellings in the EU. In June 2013, CECODHAS Housing Europe organised a two-day colloquium in Leuven, Belgium to address the issue of the role of housing in the future social contract. It brought together practitioners, political decision makers, academics and professionals involved in the housing and related sectors who wished to explore current trends and challenges, as well as future perspectives. In doing so it sought to encourage wider debate and reflection on the future of housing and the welfare state in general, and social housing in particular. Similar colloquia have been organised by CECODHAS Housing Europe in earlier years, again looking at how social housing providers should be addressing issues of the day.

With the major economic and social upheaval of many European Member States in the last five years and a greater coordination of social policies likely as further fiscal and economic union is contemplated, it seemed an appropriate time to discuss the current welfare changes taking place in Europe and the likely future challenges. The colloquium aimed to gather expertise, examples and ideas from both within and outside the housing sector, enabling participants to think more widely and adventurously about how decent and affordable housing can be delivered in the future. This will help them shape their own organisation’s policies, as well as those of national governments across Europe.

Strong social protection or welfare systems are one of the defining features of European countries.

Established decades ago, they have helped to establish a secure and good standard of living for the population, and are much admired internationally. It is scarcely surprising that housing is a key element of these welfare systems, given the importance of people’s homes in determining their standard of living and wellbeing.

Times have changed however and future housing and welfare provision systems need to reflect this. As a result of the financial crisis there is now a need for a more balanced housing market to support the stabilisation of economies. Energy efficiency as well as the use of renewable energy systems in the housing stock are now important elements of ensuring a sustainable environmental future and changing demographics and higher welfare costs mean hard choices have to be faced in allocating scarce resources.

Having being provided at the start of the two days with an enlightening overview of the global housing situation by Raquel Rolnik, the UN Special Rapporteur for Adequate Housing, three key areas of discussion and debate were addressed.

The first of these related to the latest trends in redesigning the social protection systems to cope with demographic and unemployment challenges and widening inequalities, in particular the individualisation of rights and the targeting of benefits reflecting the shift away from earlier, more universal, approaches. In the housing sector this translates into a shrinking of the size of the social housing sector and a concentration of resources on the poorest households. Ideas were debated as to how better to deliver social and employment policies that will ensure both a competitive and fair Europe.

The second key question focussed on the role of social housing providers and residents in contributing to reduced carbon emissions required to meet the European energy saving targets. These discussions focussed on the policy instruments being used to deliver the green economy and identified some of the misunderstandings around the simplistic idea that green growth will be the solution to both the economic and social challenges currently faced. It also sought to identify possible ways forward with regard to financing and behavioural change.

The final area of debate related to wider questions of governance, by looking at the need for a major and fundamental transition of European and global economies, if sustainable places to live are to be developed.

The democracy challenge inherent in the design and management of the policies needed to bring about this change generated a wide-reaching and creative debate.

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Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them A concluding statement by MEP Karima Delli highlighted the progress that has been made recently in the European Parliament when the Plenary Session of the European Parliament voted in favour of an initiative report on social housing in the European Union, with the recognition that access to housing is a fundamental right and that guaranteeing access to decent and adequate housing is an international obligation incumbent on the Member States. The report repeatedly reminds us that housing is a key instrument for achieving social justice and cohesion and acknowledges the role of the social housing sector in combating poverty and promoting inclusion and social cohesion.

Over 60 participants from a broad range of housing and other related sectors attended the colloquium. A participatory approach was used throughout, with all participants being engaged in the discussion process.

Twenty-four formal contributions were made, with contributors drawn from a range of experience and backgrounds. A list of these contributors can be found in Appendix 1 on page 41. In addition, feedback from the group discussions has been summarised and included in the report.

This report does not give a verbatim report of all contributions made, but rather sets out the four keynote addresses in full and summarises the reflections and ideas generated through debate on these topics. It was not the intention of the colloquium to develop specific policy guidance for national governments and the European Commission, but rather to seek to challenge and debate possible future ways in which social housing providers can provide appropriate and effective services in the future.

CECODHAS Housing Europe hopes that you will find the ideas and challenges in this report both interesting and stimulating. We do not expect that you will agree with all of the ideas, but we hope that they will encourage you to join in that wider thinking and debate about the future for welfare systems in Europe and how we can work together to ensure that all of our citizens can have access to decent and affordable homes.

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Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them

Keynote Address 1: Housing Commodification, Finance and the Right to Adequate Housing Raquel Rolnik, UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing1 In view of the financial crisis that has engulfed the global economic system, one of the Special Rapporteur’s main themes over the last five years has inevitably been a focus on housing finance. What happened in 2008 was the first indicator of the failure of the global approach to housing finance that had been in place since the 1970s. The key driving forces of globalisation and neo-liberalism during the last 20 or 30 years saw a U-turn in housing policy agendas throughout the world. These changes were either instituted by national governments or imposed by international financial institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund, through their loan conditions.

This new approach was mainly based on the withdrawal of national governments from direct support of the housing sector and a move towards a greater reliance on the market to address housing provision. Policies were designed to create stronger and larger financial housing markets. In 1993, an influential World Bank 2 report summarised the new thinking on housing policy. It contained guidance on how important housing could be for the economy, but also guidelines for governments on how to best design policies to achieve this goal. The takeover of the housing sector by financial drivers has been such a massive and prevalent trend, 3 that a further World Bank report issued in 1996 declared the housing finance genie to be out of the bottle.

The commodification of housing, as well as the increased use of housing as an investment asset within a globalised financial market has deeply impacted the enjoyment of the right to adequate housing. The belief that markets were the most rational means of resource and wealth distribution, as well as the growing role of investment in housing under globally integrated financial systems led to increasing state withdrawal from the housing sector and the abandonment of the concept of housing as a social good or a social policy. The wave of dismantling of basic institutional welfare and the mobilisation of a range of policies intended to extend market discipline, competition and commodification have been the dominant aspects of housing policy around the world in the last three decades.

New political and economic philosophies and policies have emerged, including fiscal constraint, free trade, reduced welfare spending and lower taxation, have been endorsed by governments around the world during the last 30 years. In the area of housing this has been expressed through the privatisation of public housing, drastic cuts in state investment in housing, reduced rental subsidies and the deregulation of housing finance markets. Every country has had a different experience, and although it is very difficult to generalise, it is possible to see a clear trend. The new approach to housing provision also hit those less developed countries, where housing welfare systems had not existed, or had been very weak and marginal. The American sub-prime housing crisis was the first international recognition of the problems generated by this deregulated, market-oriented approach to housing.

In order to promote the opportunity for international finance to take over the housing sector, it was necessary to abolish the concepts of housing as a social good and to create a very powerful psychological thinking which is that home-ownership is the way to go, and that for of rental (with certain exceptions, such as Germany and Switzerland) could be seen as failure. The introduction of policies to encourage homeownership and the dismantling of all other options served to push every working and poor family to buy homes provided by the market. Instead of developing a whole range of housing options, one of which was home-ownership, policies were developed to achieve this particular tenure as a primary goal.

1

The UN Special Rapporteur is an independent expert appointed by the Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a country situation or a specific human rights theme and to monitor implementation on the ground. The Rapporteur is not a member of the United Nations staff, nor paid for his/her work. As defined by the first Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, “the human right to adequate housing is the right of every woman, man, youth and child to gain and sustain a safe and secure home and community in which to live in peace and dignity�. Reports produced by the Special Rapporteur can be found at www.righttohousing.org 2 World Bank (1993), Housing: Enabling Markets to Work, World Bank Policy Paper, The World Bank, Washington DC 3

Buckley, R.M. and Kalarickal, J. (Ed.) (1996) Thirty Years of World Bank Shelter Lending: What Have We Learned, The World Bank, Washington DC

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Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them In terms of housing, two large assumptions underpinned this approach, neither of which corresponded to reality. These were that firstly, the state does not have a place in housing and secondly, that the private market will be able to take over and provide housing solutions for all.

The result of these neo-liberal policies was that there was a tremendous government investment in promoting housing finance options, primarily through tax exemptions, which is greatest form of state expenditure on housing, but which doesn’t provide housing for those in greatest need. Governments were also very active in deregulating financial markets to attract international capital, the introduction of reductions in rent control and tenant protection and reduced state investment in new stock or maintenance of the existing stock. The result has been the degradation of the publicly owned housing stock, which reinforced the stigmatisation of social housing and the common understanding that living in a government-provided home was evidence of failure.

The human right to adequate housing as defined by international law has a precise definition. Adequacy is defined to include the following seven elements, viz. legal security of tenure, availability of services, materials, facilities and infrastructure, affordability, habitability, accessibility, location and cultural adequacy and is in line with the core elements of the right to adequate housing as defined by the United Nations 4 Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Clearly it can be seen from the definition that the concept of the right to adequate housing is not simply just to do with housing as a good or a commodity, but rather as a point of access for the household to other human rights – food and health, family life, education and employment, community and income generating opportunities.

Affordability is an important element in the definition of adequate housing. There is a precise human rights definition for affordability as “Personal or household financial costs associated with housing should be at 5 such a level that the attainment and satisfaction of other basic needs are not threatened or compromised”.

For example, housing is not affordable if the high cost of housing means that it is not possible to eat properly or send children to school. It is required that steps should be taken by governments to ensure that the percentage of income spent on housing-related costs is, in general, commensurate with income levels. It also requires that governments should establish housing subsidies for those unable to obtain affordable housing, as well as forms and levels of housing finance which adequately reflect housing needs. In accordance with the principle of affordability, tenants should be protected by appropriate means against unreasonable rent levels or rent increases.

There has been a massive bubble in housing prices everywhere, with evidence from the IMF showing that for every increase of 16 per cent of credit availability to build houses, there is an increase in prices of 10 per cent. The more money that is invested into the residential sector, the more the house prices will continue to increase, especially if there is a restriction on supply. House prices in Europe have increased on average by more than 180 per cent in less than 10 years and income levels have not kept up, thus worsening affordability. There is no such thing as free competition in the housing market when you have very rich and poor players. For poor people, housing is a fulfilment of their human right to adequate housing, rather an asset or commodity, and they cannot compete financially with those who are already well housed, but for whom housing represents an investment opportunity.

Another important term in the definition of adequate housing relates to security of tenure. The shift in approach in recent decades has put the emphasis on home-ownership as the tenure of choice, which is commonly perceived to provide security of tenure. But this is a misconception because, from the human rights point of view, no single tenure is more secure than any other. As has been seen around the world, many home-owners have found it virtually impossible to resist the pressure imposed by the housing price bubble, and when the financial crisis burst, massive foreclosures resulted all around the world, with notable examples in USA and Spain. The first to lose their homes were the poor and vulnerable.

From the point of view of the right to adequate housing, the most important focus should be the poor and vulnerable and the obligation of the state is to promote and protect their rights. In our current housing finance 4

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (1991): The Right to Adequate Housing (Art.11 (1)) 12/13/1991.

CESCR General Comment 4.

5 Ibid

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Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them system, the first people to suffer are the poor and vulnerable. Our current housing finance system is not able to provide adequate housing for the poor and vulnerable. It may promote jobs and economic growth and houses for those on middle and higher incomes, but it is not the best solution for the poor and vulnerable.

The main concern of a banker is the risk associated with lending to an individual and if the loan applicants are poor and vulnerable, the risk is high and therefore the interest charged on the mortgage will be higher to address the risk. It is thus inevitably discriminatory Another element of the shift in housing policies in the last 20 to 30 years has been the strong emergence of the notion of choice. Emphasis has been placed on the ability of households to choose where and how to live, rather than be allocated housing. The idea of free choice and a free market are very powerful - but is it really a free choice in a free market? An example from Chile shows how this may not be the case, where poor households are given a grant to buy a home in the private market, wherever and however they choose.

In principle, this is very good, the state is giving more money to the poorer households, who can then make a free choice as to what and where they should buy. But in an unregulated market, developers built low-cost housing on the cheapest possible land, in order to maximise profit. By using the worst land available, with no urban amenities, jobs or schools the housing provided does not remotely meet the definition of adequate housing. The result was a massive offer of houses in the middle of nowhere, expanding cities enormously with energy implications and massive concentrations of low-income households. The only choice for lowincome households was to buy that product or not buy anything.

It is commonly assumed that when the economic crisis is over that the housing crisis will also be over. This is a misconception. The response to the housing crisis has been primarily fiscal, with austerity and budget cuts for ordinary people and massive bailouts for the banks. The crisis has led to an enormous increase in waiting lists for social housing, many households have had to foreclose on their homes, there is a reduced supply of new homes on home-ownership markets due to bank lending restrictions and reduced confidence by potential purchasers facing employment uncertainty. These backlogs and lost opportunities will not be easily or quickly regained once the economic position improves.

It is now very clear that the concentrated focus on financing credit for home-ownership has failed. The financial crisis and its origins reflect the inabilities of market mechanisms to provide adequate and affordable housing for all, and more than that, the policy has had a very negative impact on the existing housing stock.

Precipitated by the US sub-prime housing crisis, the current financial crisis has been considered comparable with the Great Depression. It is now apparent that neo-liberalism is a failed approach, but nevertheless it is still dominant, with many of the same financial players still applying the same recipes.

We should however not be too pessimistic. We have a great opportunity with this crisis, the best one in the last 30 years, to change our mind-sets and understanding. It remains to be seen whether errors in the past can be recognised and re-addressed through a radical and democratic re-appropriation of housing as a human right.



Follow the UN special rapporteur on Twitter @raquelrolnik



Find out more at http://www.righttohousing.org

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Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them

UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, Raquel Rolnik

Reflections on issues raised in the keynote address 1.1 Housing, market failure and the economic crisis It is impossible to ignore macro-economic developments in Europe in any discussion of housing as part of a future social contract. Housing is not a commodity as others are. It provides both consumption and investment opportunities and the market cannot be its sole provider. Nor can the related political developments be ignored, since the perceived lack of access to public and/or affordable housing for local people is one of the issues contributing to the re-emergence of right-wing politics throughout Europe.

There are divergent economic recovery paths in Europe. Significant fiscal adjustment has taken place in many Member States, and although there is some progress on competitiveness in Southern Europe, it has been achieved at a very high cost of large-scale unemployment, especially among young people. In terms of the global position, employment rates are diverging globally, with Europe still not doing well, whereas recovery in the USA and Japan is much stronger. In May 2013, the average rate of unemployment was 12.1 per cent in the Eurozone, with significant variation existing, both between and within countries. This 6 compares to 3.6 per cent in Japan and 7.6 per cent in the USA. What policy responses are needed in Europe in respect of the economic crisis? The European Central Bank has already taken some measures and there is currently debate as to the direction of future measures.

Policy responses needed to address the current situation should provide medium term frameworks, covering all policy pillars and could include:  Monetary policy has a role to play, to support economic activity and avoid deflation, but it has limited scope with historically low interest rates.

6

United States Department of Labor, International Labor Comparisons, July 2013 http://www.bls.gov/fls/intl_unemployment_rates_monthly.htm 8

Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them    

Fiscal consolidation is necessary in both the short and medium term.

Structural measures are also necessary to improve some economies, boosting growth and employment.

A better functioning financial system is needed, increasing bank capitalisation where needed.

Institutional improvements, such as a banking union in the Eurozone, in the view of some would further strengthen Eurozone economies. Further integration of this type however requires political support from European citizens, and this is unlikely at present since there is little confidence in the European institutions.

The future for housing and the economy can be viewed from different economic perspectives. The following two approaches are those currently being discussed and implemented in various forms in the Member States. The austerity (neo-liberal) approach is one where the housing crisis is seen as part of the normal business cycle and needs to be lived through. The private sector is trusted to develop a more productive housing sector and it is considered that high-comfort housing should only be attained by those with more wealth. Urbanisation is seen to create economic growth and is thus good for the economy, accepting that rising land values are an inherent consequence of this. The neo-liberal austerity vicious circle means that the high price of housing creates the necessity for large investments, leading to high levels of indebtedness, which creates the necessity for creating high profits by increasing the price of houses.

The stimulus (Keynesian) approach recognises that the housing crisis needs to be reduced with state intervention. In this approach, the state should support productive efficiency, ensuring that houses of a high enough standard should be socially accessible, with rights to build being given to the state. The associated vicious circle means that achieving economic growth requires strong investment by the state in capital projects and subsidies to housing, which creates high levels of state indebtedness, creating the necessity of high economic outputs in housing in order to collect taxes to repay the state debts.

A third approach could be termed Beyond Growth, which recognises that we are at a crossroads in housing direction, in which we should make better use of the existing housing stock and give other values to housing than those imposed by the market. Characteristics of this approach are frugal efficiency, with housing viewed primarily as a consumption good, providing shelter and stability for the household rather than as status symbols or investment opportunities. New construction is not seen as a priority, due to the availability of underused housing capacity throughout Europe, either in derelict, secondary/vacation, or large houses with few inhabitants. The re-use and recycling of these homes should be the first step. The housing sector could thus be an important area for re-orientation of Member States’ economies and avoiding the debt-growth-debt loops that many economies are currently trapped in.

1.2 Home-ownership as a policy focus Levels of home-ownership vary throughout Europe, ranging from over 90 per cent in some East European countries to 40 per cent in Germany. High rates are also found in the southern European countries, such as Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Malta and Greece. Despite the significantly different tenure profiles in the Member States there has been an increase in home-ownership rates in most EU countries in the last 25 years, reflecting the national macro-economic policies developed to encourage this tenure option in virtually all 7 Member States. Tax systems are often used to encourage home-ownership and can be costly and tends to be regressive. If the supply of new housing is rigid, this capitalisation of tax advantage is reflected in house prices, reducing affordability and restricting access to home ownership. High home-ownership rates are not associated with stable housing systems – a pattern that is now becoming increasingly obvious in many Member States.

It is now increasingly questioned as to whether it is really possible that everyone should seek to become a homeowner, and indeed, the wisdom of such a policy. The idea that individual freehold is the absolute goal and everything else is inferior is now widely recognised as misguided. Not only does this approach lead to high levels of indebtedness, it also hinders labour market mobility, because once people have made the investment in housing, the long-term commitments in terms of mortgage payments make it much harder to move. Home-ownership can also act as an impediment to changing accommodation according to the different life stages, having a larger or smaller property or one adapted to different physical abilities. Many older persons are trapped in their property if they are unable to sell it.

7

Pittini, A. and Laino, E. (2012) Housing Review 2012, CECODHAS Housing Europe, Brussels

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Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them Many of the benefits of stability that come with home-ownership can also be found in cooperative and other collective forms of tenure. The quality of collective housing is very good in some countries, for example in Sweden and Germany, accounting for their comparatively low rates of home-ownership. There is also evidence in both of these countries that young people want to stay in the city rather than move out to the suburbs, reflecting the quality of urban life including well-organised public space.

There are however many advantages to home-ownership and it is important to keep a balanced view. There is a huge psychological benefit in owning one’s own home, linked to the stability of the family and providing a basis for growth and development of individuals. There is also the financial benefit of creating an asset through the purchase of a home, rather than paying rent, which does not increase the household’s asset base or future possibilities for generating capital. It was suggested by some that with house prices currently falling in many Member States, it may now be the time for governments to actually promote homeownership. Not that this should be a permanent policy direction, but rather one that is currently appropriate to encourage.

There is little desire to return to a position where massive state providers need to provide housing for all.

Rather, the role of the state is seen as being to provide regulation of the market and promotion of a variety of alternative tenures, with protection of the poor and vulnerable as a priority. A wide range of policies and protections can be used to deliver this. The current European Commission view that the state can only provide for the poorest is not in line with the human rights charter - the state needs to be able to provide support and opportunities in a variety of different situations, using a wide range of polices. This is the opposite of what many Member States have actually been doing for the last 30 years, with their almost exclusive focus on promotion of home-ownership as the only desirable form of tenure.

1.3 Security of tenure and choice of housing The economic crisis has increased inequality and poverty and made housing issues more acute. The situation is far from improving in many EU Member States, where tenure is less secure and there is little or no choice of housing. There is also an emerging housing need for those on middle incomes who fall in the gap between home-ownership and social housing – unable to afford the former and not eligible for the latter.

The traditional route for households in this predicament has been to rent in the private rented sector, but all too often this sector is also increasingly becoming unaffordable, due to the pressure of demand upon it.

In general there are three broad forms of tenure - ownership, rental and some form of collective arrangement. As noted above, there has been housing policy discrimination for decades, with homeownership being favoured above other forms of tenure. One possible way forward to address this may be to introduce macro-economic policies designed to achieve tenure neutrality i.e. a condition in which the consumer is financially indifferent between owning and renting a dwelling, with the housing finance and tax systems not distorting consumer choices between renting and owning. Since there is no indication that the end of the economic crisis will see an end to the housing crisis, it is important to try and stop thinking in conventional terms and consider instead alternative tenures and approaches to housing provision to widen both choice and opportunity, such community land trusts, self-help housing and co-housing. These all help to provide a more communitarian approach to housing provision and widen the range of tenure choice available.

It is increasingly recognised that the provision of a physically adequate house is not sufficient for the right to adequate housing to be met. In France, for example, there is a new piece of legislation giving a right to housing, but many families simply refuse to accept the housing offered. Vulnerable people just do not want to live in social houses in neighbourhoods and environments that are not sufficiently safe or welcoming to envisage a lifetime spent there. The right to dream of a better future should not be denied, nor that of choosing one’s city neighbourhood or district. Many households do not have this choice, which contributes to a decline in society’s wellbeing, as people feel that they are not fully-fledged citizens any more.

The question remains as to how can all forms of tenure be strengthened in terms of security, including individual home-ownership, private rental and communal ownership in the formal sector, as well as the informal settlements more commonly found in developing countries? There is an increasing recognition that the state obligation is not to provide everyone with a house, but rather to make sure that everyone can have access to adequate housing with an opportunity to progress to better housing options and not have to face insecurity of tenure or even forced eviction. Although it is recognised that displacement does need to take

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Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them place in some instances, what must not happen, from the perspective of human rights and adequate housing, is leaving a family, individual or community homeless, without any alternative. An appropriate alternative should be in place at the time of displacement. If nothing can be offered as an alternative, then the displacement should not take place.

1.4 Housing affordability Access to affordable housing is increasingly problematic for many sectors of the population, with significant social and labour market consequences. Yet there is surprisingly little debate or popular agitation around the issue.

The US housing market, where the crisis started with sub-prime lending, is now healing and house prices are rising again in many countries around the world. In Europe, with the notable exceptions of France and the UK, many housing markets are still weak and affordability remains a concern, especially for first-time buyers and the poorest households, even through house prices have come down. In the rental market, the affordability situation is similar, with very high proportions of household income being spent on rent. In Lithuania, 66 per cent of the population spend more than 40 per cent of their household disposable income on housing costs, 65 per cent in Romania and 45 per cent in the UK, compared to an average of 26 per cent 8 throughout the European Union and 11 per cent in Austria. Investment in new residential property is weak, worsening current shortages, driving up prices and storing up problems for the future. It is clear that affordability issues are not going to go away quickly. Energy costs also continue to increase and add to the non-affordability of housing.

9

The Council of Europe’s European Social Charter which sets out human rights for everyday life, considers one of the fundamental freedoms and rights to be protected is access to adequate and affordable housing.

This is not aimed solely at vulnerable or disadvantaged people, as appears to be the preferred policy of the European Commission, but at all those households that do not have decent and affordable housing and who are threatened by poverty.

Protocol 26 on Services of General Interest, which was appended to the Treaty of Lisbon after the European Commission dispute with the Dutch government regarding eligibility for social housing, requires that affordability be a key criteria of these services. The definition of affordability has yet to be established however. There was a call for a definition of this affordability principle, not by taking one single service, but rather a taking a basket of services considered essential (by Member States rather than the European Commission) and then defining the percentage of a household’s income to be spent on them to ensure that these services are accessible to all.

It was noted that the cost of providing social housing reflects three key things - land, construction costs and interest repayments on capital borrowed. Increasingly the question is being asked as to how banks can be excluded from the financing of social housing to minimise the cost of the interest payment element of housing provision. Examples were provided of how alternative financial models have been developed - using revolving funds in Salzburg, where an attractive financing model, which excludes the banks, reduces the cost 2 of building and renting a 75m apartment by €300 a month, from €850 to €550; and in Luxembourg where private investors work in cooperation with social housing providers to provide affordable housing, as well as benefit to the private investor.

Other routes to address affordability are rent regulation, with an effective approach using rent caps being used in Germany to control unacceptably high rent increases and incentives for private landlords to improve energy performance relate to increased rent levels that can be charged. In this case, tenants can be charged more rent if the building has a good energy performance, but if the building has a poor energy performance the rent has to be lowered. This is seen to be a fair system and it is working well.

When thinking radically about financing mechanisms for social housing provision, does the concept of providing grant support need to be questioned? Should government funds be provided as loans that need to be paid back, rather than grants? With an increasingly profit-oriented approach in the social housing sector,

8

Eurostat Data (2011) Council of Europe (2011): The Social Charter at a Glance, Council of Europe, Strasbourg http://www.coe.int/AboutCoe/media/interface/publications/charte_sociale_en.pdf 9

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Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them there may be arrangements regarding repayment over a fixed term of 30 years, during which time the rents of the properties are regulated.

Participants meeting in Working Groups

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Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them

Keynote Address 2: Welfare in Europe after the crisis: Rising inequalities or prospects for a better quality of work and life in Europe?

Jean-Marie Jungblut, Research Officer for the Living Conditions and Quality of Life Unit, European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working (Eurofound) The housing issues currently faced in Europe have to be viewed from a broader macro-economic perspective, key aspects of which are detailed below.

Within a global context, Europe is still one of the best places to live. According to an international index, nine 10 out of ten of the best places to live in the world are European. There has been substantial progress in living standards in Europe over the last 50 years. Europeans rate their satisfaction with life as 7.1 out of 10 on average, with the lowest being Bulgaria at 5.5 and the highest being Denmark at 8.4. Sadly, the crisis has wiped out years of economic progress since 2008, and more than 26 million people are currently unemployed. As can be seen in Figure 1 below, the share of households where no one works although at least one member is of working age has increased between 2007 and 2012. This is especially true for those countries that have been hit hardest by the recession in 2008 (e.g. Greece, Spain, Ireland and the Baltic countries).

Figure 1: Working age households where no-one is working

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Employment is increasing in only a few Member States and stagnating or decreasing in most of the others, notably in Greece, Spain and Ireland. One of the biggest concerns is with the 14 million young people who 12 are not in education, employment or training (NEETs). The estimated cost of NEETs in terms of lost tax income, earnings, higher benefit payments etc. is ₏153bn/annum (amounting to 1.2 per cent of GDP in the 13 European Union in 2011. Such a waste of money should not be allowed to happen by Europe’s governments. These young people represent the future of Europe, and they will be the earners of the future supposed to provide income support for the older generations.

10

Human Development Index, 2013 Source of data: EUROSTAT online database, figures for 2007 and 2012.

12 Mascherini, M., Jungblut, J-M, Salvatore, L., Meierkord, A, (2012): NEETs - Young people not in employment, education or training: Characteristics, costs and policy responses in Europe, European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions 13 Ibid 11

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Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them As can be seen in Figure 2 below, unsurprisingly, the at-risk-of-poverty rates have increased in many European countries between 2007 and 2011.Poverty has increased substantially in the Nordic countries, traditionally known for their social policies preventing poverty and social exclusion. Poverty seems to have decreased in crisis ridden countries like the Baltic States. This is however a statistical artefact, as it is not the proportion of households below the poverty line (60% of the median disposable income) that has increased, but the reference poverty line has substantially decreased because almost all households have seen their income decreasing. In that sense, what we observe only looks good at first sight, but is indeed a statistical artefact.

Figure 2: At-risk-of-poverty rate in Europe, 2007 and 2011

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Relative poverty is usually a collateral of income inequality, the distribution of income across the population of households. As measured with the gini coefficient which is equal to 0 in the case of total equality (everybody has the same income) and 1 (where one household out of n has all income) we see the changes for some EU countries since the 1980s. The data we present comes from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) and covers the income situation in a range of countries since the 1980. The country with the most inequal income distribution is the United Kingdom with .35 and up from .30 at the beginning of the 1980s. For a contrast, the world gini coefficient is estimated as .60. The least unequal country in Europe is Denmark with a gini of .23 which has decreased form .26 in the early 1980s. Denmark is one of the few countries where income inequality has decreased over time. The same holds true for Sweden and to a lesser degree France and Austria. With the exception of France all these countries are also highly competitive. This is evidence that economic performance must not come at the price of high income inequality and the absence of social dialogue (c.f. Ryder15 and Wilkinson & Picket16 ).

14

Source of data: At-risk-of poverty rates – Persons living in households where DPI ≤ 60per cent Median national DPI, based on EU-SILC, as published by Eurostat, 2007 and 2011.

15 Wilkinson, R. G. (2005). The impact of inequality: How to make sick societies healthier. NY: New Press.

16 Source of data: Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), waves I to VIII (ca. 1981 – 2010). The Gini coefficient measures the inequality among values of a frequency distribution, in this case income. A Gini coefficient of zero expresses perfect equality, where all values are the same (for example, where everyone has an exactly equal income). A Gini coefficient of one expresses maximal inequality among values (for example where only one person has all the income) 14

Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them 17

Figure 3: Changing income inequality, 1981 - 2010

The surge of income inequality observable in virtually all developed countries over the last 30 years is a collateral of the neo-conservative policies that have been prevalent since the advent of Thatcherism and Reagonomics Complementary or as a consequence to objective findings such as income disparities, it is more important to see what happens with people’s lives, how they cope in their daily lives The latest European Quality of Life Survey from the European Foundation shows that overall levels of 18 happiness, optimism about the future and satisfaction with services have decreased since 2007. Twentyfive per cent of respondents stated that their quality of life was worse than it was a year ago, indicating that the economic crisis has had its impact.

The survey also produced information on households’ ability to make ends meet. Broadly, those in the northern and western parts of Europe report a stronger financial situation than those in southern and eastern regions of Europe. Differences between Member States, range from 50% of households in Greece to 3% of the households in Denmark having great difficulties to make ends meet. As can be seen in Figure 4 below, 45 per cent of households on average have trouble making ends meet (having at least some difficulties making ends meet), with households in rural areas, single parent households, low-income households and households where no one works experiencing the greatest problems. Thirty per cent said that their income position had worsened compared to 12 months ago.

17

See Foreword by Guy Ryder in Vaughan-Whitehead (2011) Work inequalities in the crisis. Evidence form Europe. ILO. http://digamo.free.fr/vw2011.pdf#page=8.

18 Anderson, R., Dubois, H., Leoncikas, T. Sandor, E.: (2012) Quality of Life in Europe: Impacts of the crisis, Eurofound 15

Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them Figure 4: Difficulty making ends meet

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In terms of the housing situation, the EQLS survey also showed that, on average, the quality of housing improved in the EU between 2007 and 2011 and there was a higher level of satisfaction with housing at score of 7.7 out of 10 compared to 7.6 out of 10 in 2007. Satisfaction is relatively high for homeowners at 8.0, compared to those who rent in the private and social sectors (both 7.0). Satisfaction with accommodation drops significantly if people experience more than three problems with their accommodation - for example, shortage of space, damp and problems with doors and windows.

Evidence of the financial crisis can be seen in the numbers of people with arrears in housing costs or utility bills, which have both increased in the period, as can be seen in Figure 5 below. The most extreme problems are to be found in Cyprus and Greece and amongst those living in the private rented sector:

Figure 5: Arrears on utility and housing costs, 2003 - 2011

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More and more Europeans have trouble affording their accommodation, especially those in the private rented sector. On average, almost six per cent fear having to leave their accommodation, as they can no longer afford it. This figure is almost twice as high when renting from a private landlord, as can be seen in 19

Source of Date: Eurofound Quality of Life Survey, waves I to III, question Q58, Households that have at least some difficulties to make ends meet.

20 Ibid

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Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them Figure 6 below, where over 12 per cent of those in the private rental sector think it quite or very likely that they will have to leave their accommodation in the next six months because they can no longer afford it. The number of owners with mortgages expecting to do so had doubled in the four-year period, to almost six per cent.

Figure 6: Likelihood of having to leave current accommodation in next six months due to 21 unaffordability, 2007 and 2011

The survey also showed that physical and social characteristics of the immediate neighbourhood are key determinants of people’s quality of life. Approximately 75 per cent of people in the EU live in cities and towns 22 with more than 5,000 inhabitants. As can be seen in Figure 7 below, half of people in larger urban areas experience problems in their local neighbourhoods, such as crime, vandalism, litter, noise, traffic congestion and the quality of water and air. Thirty-six per cent reported not experiencing any of these problems at all, although experiencing multiple problems was commonplace, with 31 per cent of households reporting three or more problems.

Figure 7: Problems in the neighbourhood, urban and rural

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21

Source of Date: Eurofound Quality of Life Survey 2011, Response to Q20.

Eurostat Data (2008) 23 Source of Date: Eurofound Quality of Life Survey Response to Q50.

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Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them Evidence found in Eurofound’s Quality of Life Survey should send a red alert to policymakers, highlighting the need to return to a path of growth and jobs to address the challenges that have clearly emerged as a result of the financial crisis. The actions put in place to address the financial crisis seem to be having some effect, with a calming of market pressures, but the divide in the social fabric continues to deepen. The question has to be raised – is too high a price being paid for fiscal stability? Some fiscal expansion may be required to create jobs and growth and an ambitious debate has started, including ideas for stabilisers of the situation, such as the EU Youth Employment Initiative and the Youth Guarantee Scheme. The purpose of further training is questionable however in a situation where there are insufficient jobs and where young people are already overqualified. The search is on for employment policies that can deliver both a competitive and a fair Europe at the same time and as we have seen at the beginning this is possible.

Successful examples can be found in Austria and Germany, where they have both sound public finances and competitiveness.

Compared to other parts of the world, Europe has high levels of spending on social policy and it is unlikely that more money will be allocated in the current economic circumstances. More needs to be done but with limited resources available, they will have to be used more effectively, finding intelligent ways of doing more with less.

Policy options relating to social housing identified in Eurofound publications include social housing policies having to play a role in emergency situations to facilitate transfer to more affordable housing; pro-active early warning systems such as the „Vroeg Eropaf“ scheme in Amsterdam which provides advice to households who cannot pay for housing anymore and the development of early referral and prevention advice for those experiencing problems.

In summary, four key points for policymakers to note are:  Europe needs to return to growth and stable markets are essential to achieving this.  The social crisis persists even though fiscal stability is being achieved. Can all Member States support this?  Huge progress has been made with economic integration within the European Union. Consideration now needs to be given to further social and employment integration in order to deliver a competitive and fair Europe.  Attention should be focussed on developing intelligent reforms to enable improvements to be brought about without spending significantly more money.

In times of crisis, as Einstein noted, “imagination is more important than knowledge, for knowledge is limited to all we now know or understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand”.

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Follow Eurofound on Twitter @eurofound

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Find out more at http://www.eurofound.europa.eu

Reflections on issues raised in the keynote address 2.1 Social housing policy directions Most people in Europe are relatively well housed in global terms and the crisis that exists relates to housing policy rather than housing provision per se. Housing policies need to be rethought, now that the financial crisis and indeed the earlier boom, have served to show the limits of the market’s ability to provide access to affordable and decent housing. Current policies do not necessarily ensure that those in most need benefit.

There is also a lack of integration of policies, with poor connections between those areas of support needed for the most vulnerable individuals and households.

Providing grants for the construction of social housing has been in decline as a policy approach since the 1980s. It can be costly, lack flexibility and the allocation of dwellings can be unfair, but had the main advantage that it did ensure that building took place, and in some instances could play a positive counter-

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Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them cyclical role in balancing housing markets. It is well to remember however that in most Member States social housing is a very small component of the housing stock, with only five of the 27 EU Member States having 18 or more per cent of their stock as social housing and 16 Member States having six or less per cent social 24 housing stock. Clearly in these latter states, there is less opportunity for such balancing to take place.

Given this variation in socially rented stock, should each Member State define its social housing mission according to the size of the stock of housing that is available? For example, if the social housing in a particular Member State only accounts for five per cent of the stock, then realistically it can only address the needs of five per cent of the population. The mission cannot be increased unless the stock of housing increases. If the Member State has a small stock of social housing, it makes sense to focus on the most needy; if the Member State has a larger stock, as in the Netherlands, it is possible to focus on a wider range of different groups.

When housing ministers meet their financial counterparts they are in a difficult situation with respect to finance and austerity measures, so it is very difficult to advocate for social housing and social housing policy.

If they are going to be more effective, they need to rely on the support of civil society and NGOs who can help to make decision-makers aware of the issues. They also need to view social housing from a broader perspective, viewing it as an investment in the health, safety and wellbeing of society, as well as the provision of shelter. When the added value is taken into account generated through the creation of jobs, savings in health and care costs and reductions in crime, investment in social housing provides excellent value for money.

There is a great diversity of systems of housing provision, even within the EU. Not only are there widely differing tenure structures, there are also widely differing economies, experiencing different fiscal and austerity conditions. Some Member States have excess housing others urgently need a new building programme. It is not clear how there can possibly be specific European recommendations in respect of social housing. This is illustrated in the current debates between the European Commission and various Member States as to whether or not social housing should be exclusively reserved for the most needy. There is however a need for flexible housing policies throughout the European Union, reflecting the size and make up of stock, population demographics, economic and social circumstances, culture etc.

2.2 Evidence-based policy making There is a need to develop a strong evidence-based approach to policy in respect of social housing in the EU. All too often statements are made without a clear evidence base. One such statement is the claim that the universal nature of social housing is under threat. However, does this actually currently exist anywhere?

In most EU member states the social housing sector is very small, so where does the ideal of universal social housing come from? Also, is there evidence that social housing helps generate social mix? It may be that the allocation of social housing is not the best way to create mixed communities or it might be a very expensive and ineffective way to achieve it, so care is needed in arguing against more targeted policies by using social mix, without at least acknowledging that there is a very varied evidence basis, pointing to different conclusions.

In terms of access to social housing - one of the claims made is that social housing is forced to focus more and more on the most vulnerable. Is this actually true? Whilst it is not the role of the European Commission to reduce the role of social housing in certain countries, it is an exaggeration to say that it is forcing Member States to do so. The salary ceiling of â‚Ź33,000 in the Netherlands case for example, would include many households who would not be considered vulnerable. The European Commission justify their position by saying that subsidised housing can only be given to the less advantaged social groups who cannot afford to house themselves in the market. But how is the assessment to be made as to who is disadvantaged or not?

There are 25 million households currently living in social housing - 65 million people – does being less advantaged mean the same as being vulnerable? This latter term is used so often, but what does it actually mean? Does it refer to the street homeless, or only those with multiple and complex needs? In truth, there are different vulnerable groups; yet they are often inaccurately portrayed as one consistent group. Old people freezing, unemployed young people, those with complex mental health and addiction problems – they all have different needs. Again, a coherent evidence base to inform the European Commission and assist Member States in the development of policy would be invaluable.

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Pittini, A. and Laino, E. (2012) Housing Review 2012, CECODHAS Housing Europe, Brussels

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Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them

The development of a European Housing Observatory would be one way of gathering and analysing information on the current position throughout the EU, enabling policy direction and guidance to be more informed and effective.

2.3 Welfare targeting and social segregation Although there is no single model for social housing throughout the Member States, one common factor is that social housing provides homes for the relatively poorer and more vulnerable groups of the population.

The question as to who should be eligible for the subsidised housing has been a central point of discussion at the European Commission which, in the name of single-market and competition policy, now calls for more targeted social housing allocation policies to ensure that the subsidised housing stock can only be provided for the less advantaged. This meant that those Member States giving wide access to their social housing stock, such as the Netherlands and Sweden, have been required to revise their policies.

One of the major arguments used for encouraging wider access to social housing however has been to avoid segregation or ghettoisation of those disadvantaged groups that results from allowing only certain sectors of the community to live in social housing. Whilst undoubtedly the targeting of social housing could be improved in many countries, there are trade-offs between targeting and spatial segregation, if mixed communities are the preferred policy outcome.

Many households prefer not to live in these highly stigmatised areas of targeted welfare recipients. For many households having to access social housing is seen as an acknowledgement of failure in life - the time when they give up on their own capacity to generate income, help their children and themselves. It takes a big step to access the services, but once the decision is made it is not necessarily easy to do. One needs to be street savvy in the corridors of administration, knowing where to go, the language to use and many people fall through these administrative hurdles.

Although there are many technical issues related to housing provision, housing is primarily a matter of social methodologies. Neo-liberal policies speak about poor and vulnerable people, often distinguishing either tacitly or by implication between the good (deserving) and bad (undeserving) poor. What are the values of social housing providers and where do these fit within the calls for increased targeting and segregation of tenants. Where do the values of dignity and empowerment come into the debate? Should there be a more just allocation of rights and responsibilities? Does encouraging individuals to take more responsibility for their own lives contribute not only to the wellbeing of society, but also to their own personal wellbeing through the development of self-esteem? Such are the challenges facing society and governments in Member States.

These are fundamental decisions, which Member States are currently having to make as they define a framework for intervention. It should be a matter of choice for individual Member States and reflect the particular circumstances they face. Revisiting the concept of a common good may help in the process of defining the framework.

Roundtable discussion

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Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them

Keynote Address 3: Questioning the Green Economy Rationale Andreas Rüdinger, Research Fellow, Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI) In looking at the rationale for the green economy, there are three key questions to be addressed:   

Is the green economy really the “magic bullet” that we like to think it is?

How to address the responsibility of meeting multiple challenges and trying to bring together conflicting objectives?

What innovative policy instruments can be used to help address social and environmental objectives in the framework of the larger energy transition?

Is the green economy a magic bullet?

What exactly do we mean by the green economy? In the first preparatory document for the Rio+20 Conference, the UN Secretary General refers to it as “The green economy approach in general seeks to unite under a single banner the entire suite of economic policies and modes of economic analyses of relevance to sustainable development. In practice, this covers a rather broad range of literature and analysis, 25 often with somewhat different starting points”.

Not surprisingly, given the broadness of the definition, there is a somewhat confused interpretation of the term. Some people assume that the green economy means green growth and that this is the clean exit from the current energy and economic crises. Other interpretations are the reverse of this and say that the green economy implies a future with prosperity, but without growth. Our current economic models need to be reconsidered - should the same approaches be continued or move to something different? The green economy cannot be achieved simply by supporting new economic sectors, such as renewable energy systems, but rather by making the economy as a whole more resilient and sustainable.

There is increasing discussion in mainstream economic circles of how economic growth can be maintained within the limitations of diminishing resource availability. New thinking is emerging in terms of both closedloop economies, where recycling and reuse mean that very few new materials are needed and very little waste is produced in the production cycle, and functional service economies which take the closed loop concept a step further, by enabling consumers to purchase the functionality of a product rather than own the product themselves, for example the car-share or bicycle-hire schemes that operate in many cities.

The interpretation of the term green economy is fundamental and depending on the understanding established, the set of policy objectives will be very different. Should we try to build more green resources and mechanisms or take a path of reduced consumption – are we looking for efficiency and/or sufficiency? A more economically-focussed understanding of the green economy would relate to the externalisation of costs in terms of climate change and fossil fuels. Again, It is not really clear which concept to use or how the various interpretations link up. Is it possible to decouple economic growth and resource / energy consumption?

Given that this wide spectrum of interpretation exists, it is important to be clear as to what policy objectives we wish to achieve through legislation and other instruments in relation to the green economy. It is also important to be clear as to how to deal with short-term and long-term objectives and policy consequences, recognising that timing and sequencing of policies is critical to a successful energy transition.

There are two major risks associated with the green economy. The first is believing in the “magic bullet” – that the green revolution will happen, and because it is a win-win situation all will move in this direction because there is no other choice. It is assumed that this will happen without conflicts or any real political effort and that everyone will be winners. This is really dangerous and misguided understanding, as it is a conflicted area. How the different networks of actors develop in this transition has to be made clear and explicit and treated by policies, since inevitably there will be winners and losers. The same argument applies 25

UN Secretary General (2010) Progress to Date and the Remaining Gaps in the Implementations of the Outcomes of the Major Summits in the area of Sustainable Development, as well as an Analysis of the Themes of the Conference.

Report from the Preparatory Committee for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, United Nations, New York.

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Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them to policy instruments; new incentives and fiscal instruments will not be enough if existing policies are not reconsidered. It is important to ensure that the big picture is coherent with genuine policy coordination. This is not the situation at present, where one small area is subsidised at the expense of others and confused signals are sent, as with the practice of subsidising both fossil fuels and green energy.

The other major risk is in building the green economy at all costs. Can a “green” economy within the current economic model ever be sustainable and address equity and social issues? There is a danger in focussing too much on economic and ecological aspects of the economy and not the social policies that exist alongside. There is an inherent tension in establishing a highly capital-intensive project and investmentbased economy with rising prices and costs in the short-term without causing long-term social damage.

2 Green buildings for example in Paris are very expensive, often costing €12.000/m to build. Does this mean that only the rich will have these things and sufficient fuel savings can be achieved? How is the social transition to be made alongside the energy transition?

Balancing multiple objectives Within the energy transition there are multiple and conflicting objectives, arising from differing short- and long-term time horizons and social versus environmental or economic needs. Although the long-term goal of delivering good quality living conditions is agreed, the short-term measures used to achieve this can be very different. It is important that potential conflicts between objectives are addressed explicitly, rather than hiding them beneath an apparent consensus.

Housing itself is situated at the crossroads of multiple challenges in relation to the transition to a green economy. These challenges relate to: • Social: are decent living conditions possible for all in times of rising poverty and prices?

• Energy poverty: can housing policies alleviate the risks linked to rising energy prices and scarcity?

• Environmental: energy consumption in European buildings represents over 40 per cent of total energy consumption and 25 per cent of CO2 emissions.

26 • Innovation: with the move towards nearly-zero energy buildings by 2020 , the main focus now is on retrofit rather than design of new houses.

• Urban planning: sustainable development is not about simply producing energy-efficient buildings, but rather the organisation of urban spaces to preserve diversity and integrity, limit urban sprawl, and ensure new forms of mobility within the urban areas. A wider perspective is needed here.

• Economic: if energy efficiency is taken seriously, there will also be an opportunity as thermal retrofits will become the market of the future, generating hundreds of thousands of jobs and putting €100bn per year into economic systems.

An example of conflicting objectives are the social tariffs in France, which ensure a relatively cheap energy supply to all through direct subsidy of the energy price. In the short-term they help many people, especially those on low incomes; they do not however help in the longer term energy transition process. People have adapted to the price signals provided by this policy and today one third of all buildings in France are heated by old electric heaters. This raises the question as to what extent social and energy policy objectives can be integrated into the same policy instruments. This was tried recently in France with a complex system of progressive tarification of energy, whereby people who consumed less paid less for their energy. Despite its good intention, the system was so complicated that in the end it did not work. On balance, it is better to have separate policy signals with a clear energy policy and a clear social policy rather than trying to create one integrated policy. It is important to identify and address these conflicting objectives, rather than hide behind a consensus that there is a win-win situation.

Balancing the short-term social policies and longer-term price signals is the key issue. It is not possible to simply raise energy prices in the short term, because poor people have constrained choices, since they do not choose to live in poor energy performance buildings.

Up-scaling the thermal retrofitting market in the short term is another key challenge and again one where timing is a crucial element and conflicting objectives exist. No country in Europe, not even the most 26

European Parliament (2010) Directive 2010/31/EU on the Energy Performance of Buildings (recast) http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2010:153:0013:0035:EN:PDF

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Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them advanced in this area, is near its targets. Germany, for example, has a target of 700,000 retrofits per annum, 27 but only 100,000 retrofits are being completed a year. The KfW programme in Germany, which focuses on the “easy” target groups in order to trigger a bigger market for energy efficient products and produce the economies of scale necessary in the longer term, has resulted in a regressive system of support, benefiting primarily those with greater wealth and income. Although it may help to deliver the economic objective through the investment of homeowners, socially it is not the optimum. Another example is the “Green Deal” in the UK, where a conflict between public policy objectives (reducing CO2 emissions and fuel poverty) and private company expectations on financial return (leading up to interest rates of more than 7%) provide a difficult match. Someone is obviously losing in the process, and probably both sides: with interest rates going that high, only the most profitable measures will be realized ("low hanging fruits"), and the full potential of energy savings and emission reductions will not be exploited. On the other hand, the financial expectations have led to a situation where no household is interested in the scheme, and by putting the bar too high, eventually the private companies will get no return at all.

It is important to recognise that being energy efficient is not solely about delivering energy efficient buildings, whether through new build or retrofit. It is important to see the development of energy efficient homes within the bigger picture of eco-neighbourhoods and sustainable towns and cities. With the density of urban living, there are opportunities in urban areas and eco-neighbourhoods to establish new organisational and social innovations (car-sharing, connected living and work spaces, etc.), such as the new KfW programme for sustainable districts. It is not only technical innovation that is necessary but also social innovation, possibly including establishing new forms of networking between residents, changing resident awareness and behaviour in respect of energy usage.

Innovative policy instruments New financing models are needed to support the transition to a green economy. In all cases, the interest rates used in the financing models are crucial to their effectiveness. Low-cost, long-term funding mechanisms are vital in that they can:  Provide a refinancing circuit for all stakeholders / projects.  Lower public costs for subsidised loans and third-party financing.  Tap the full potential for energy savings.  Reduce mutualised costs of renewable energy generation - a drop of the discount rate from 10 per cent to five per cent reduces generation costs by 25 to 30 per cent.

Higher public involvement is needed to ensure that effective financing models are developed. The German example of KfW is very interesting in that it can raise enormous amounts of money (€80 billion per annum) for injection into local economies and its funds are open to all housing actors (individuals, owners and companies). In France, a scheme for third party financing is currently being investigated. A funding mechanism based solely on banks and private utilities will not work, or tap the full potential of energy savings. If a realistic energy transition is to be achieved, energy savings of up to 50 per cent of what we achieve today need to be obtained. In order to achieve this, the wider approaches such as are being developed in Germany are essential. There is no other choice, since relying on new technologies and innovations which are not yet in place, is a precarious option.

Giving all citizens the capacity to become actors in the transition process is another key area for policy innovation. Participative and citizen funding schemes are promising solutions that are now beginning to be implemented. Such schemes are now mandatory in Denmark for example, and for each new wind park developed it is necessary to have local stakeholders owning at least 25 per cent of the capital. In Germany, there are over 800 energy cooperatives with a variety of owners and the ownership of renewable energy schemes in Germany, which accounted for 53GW installed capacity in 2010, is divided between farmers (11 per cent), private individuals (40 per cent,) banks (11 per cent), large utility companies (7 per cent) and the private sector (32 per cent). For such systems to work, it is necessary to have  

An adequate regulatory framework, including access to financing mechanisms.

Low entry barriers – it is €50 in the Danish example above, which encourages wider engagement since those who invest are likely to be engaged in thinking about their energy consumption.

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KfW is a government owned development bank in Germany. KfW Förderbank (KfW promotional Bank) is the largest business unit of the group, committed EUR 33.8 billion in 2008, mostly for housing and environmental protection in Germany. It is especially active in promoting energy-efficient housing for owner-occupied houses as well as for landlords, both for new houses and refurbishments.

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Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them  

An opportunity for innovation and experimentation at the local level.

An integrated approach whereby financially attractive renewable energy projects can be used to support new energy efficiency measures.

In conclusion The green economy...  Is not a “no-brainer” or a definitive “win-win” situation, but rather it requires strong political efforts and an integrated policy framework.  Requires that conflicting objectives should be made explicit and addressed, with trade-offs defined and sequencing issues addressed, if it is to be effectively implemented.  Bears a high risk of being socially exclusive rather than inclusive if the policy framework and supporting incentives are not well designed.  Can be a great economic opportunity if the fundamentals are right, but it cannot be made to work if the appropriate price signals, financing instruments and regulatory framework for local initiatives are not in place.  Should not automatically be associated with green growth per se, but rather should be part of a broader reflection on economic models and the definition of prosperity.

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Follow IDDRI on Twitter @iddrilefil

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Find out more at http://www.iddri.org/

Reflections on issues raised in the keynote address 3.1 Transition to a green economy Is it time to rethink the concept of the green economy or to reprioritise? Clearly our buildings have a very important role to play in the energy transition, since they account for 40 per cent of final energy consumption.

It is all too easy to forget however that there is a social perspective involved in the transition and that there will be an impact on people’s lives, particularly those on lower incomes. With the fallout from the financial crisis still taking place, the major focus now in Europe is on the competitiveness of its industry. This inevitably skews the decisions taken regarding the energy transition. Achieving the win-win green economy is not possible in the short term, it may be so in the longer term. However, many of the decisions to be taken are political ones, driven primarily by the impact that they will have in a short timescale. It will most certainly be a bumpy ride to get to the final destination.

There is increasingly a widespread recognition that there cannot be a simplistic approach to the transition to a green economy and that a much more sophisticated debate is needed about this, with clear definitions of progress and growth, use and ownership etc.. It is important to address different objectives through different instruments, as otherwise it becomes too complicated. It is possible however to include a requirement within energy directives or other legislation to enable those whose focus is primarily social to develop associated but separate approaches on the social side or to set aside a fund to be used for such purposes, which those with the necessary expertise can use.

It is almost inevitable that early adopters of new technologies will come from those groups with higher levels of income and it is not necessarily a bad thing. Introducing new technologies can be very complicated and there is a need to test out models, build up skills and supply chains first before diffusing the innovation throughout society.

3.2 How can social housing providers contribute to the transition?

For social housing providers, the priority is providing people with houses and ensuring the financial sustainability of their organisations. Secondary obligations relate to social sustainability and environmental protection. A reduced expectation on the return to be achieved by investors and a change in behaviour of

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Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them tenants are both necessary if social housing providers are to contribute significantly to the green economy.

There is also a need to change organisational structures and eliminate silo thinking.

There is a contradiction between the green economy and affordability, since guaranteeing the availability of resources can only be done by limitation or pricing. This hardly fits with social objectives, but if the green economy does not include the social aspects, it is pointless.

Social housing providers can have an important role to play in the transition to a green economy, in the following ways  With a large stock of properties, they are able to deliver change to a substantial number of properties, aggregating individual households into retrofitting programmes.  Being able to work with a single actor makes the delivery of loans and funding both easier and more attractive for investors.  Established relationships with tenants helps to ensure uptake of information and guidance on any behavioural changes needed to maximise the benefits of living in a newly retrofitted home.  A skilled workforce will be needed to help deliver the retrofitting programme and unemployed tenants can be linked into opportunities for training, certification and employment.  With the discussions on the 2030 framework for EU climate and energy policies now underway, the informed voices of social housing providers will help to ensure clear messages on the social elements of the transition are taken to decision makers.

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3.3 Addressing energy poverty Originally, sustainable development in the framework of public policy was perceived as primarily meeting the environmental concerns and interests of higher income groups, but more recently it has been realised that sustainable development has a social impact for poorer people as well. In late 2010, the European Commission developed an estimate of the number of households unable to afford to heat their homes 29 adequately in the European Union. This showed an average of 12 per cent of households in the countries surveyed were unable to do so, with particularly high levels in France (16 per cent) and the UK (19 per cent).

Clearly this covers a significant number of households, not just those in the most vulnerable situations.

In the past, the social dimension of sustainable development was ignored. It is realised that people cannot be excluded from sustainable development and that the energy transition needs to include all, both rich and the poor.

There is also a growing realisation that if energy poverty is not addressed, it will have an economic as well as a social impact. People in energy poverty do not live well; they have schooling problems, illness and disease due to dampness and cold. With inadequate heating the housing fabric begins to deteriorate. It is clear that investment in housing can lead to savings elsewhere, particularly in the health services. The Abbé Pierre Foundation in France is currently funding research to identify the link between heating and some chronic diseases, highlighting the implications for health of lack of heating. Already there are partial conclusions showing a link between heating and chronic disease.

Multi-level action is needed to help ensure that protection is provided for those in the severest energy poverty, an energy shield as it were, whilst the lengthy process of renovation of the existing building stock takes place. From experience, it is too complicated to have progressive social tariffs. Clear price signals are needed, but with compensation mechanisms to ensure that people who have no choice are not deprived of their heating. Behavioural change also needs to be encouraged, making sufficiency not just a necessity of the poor but rather a part of everyone’s life. Working with educationalists to introduce the ideas to young people is important, to help encourage a cultural shift towards making sufficiency an aspirational value.

Retrofitting the social housing stock will be involve billions of euros a year for many years, but an even greater task lies in addressing the stock in the private rented sector, where typically energy performance is poorer and there is less regulation of the landlords.

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Energy poverty is also termed fuel poverty in some Member States

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European Commission (2010): An Energy Policy for Consumers, Brussels http://ec.europa.eu/energy/gas_electricity/doc/forum_citizen_energy/sec(2010)1407.pdf 25

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Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them It is a question still under consideration as to whether retrofitting work should be prioritised on the least energy efficient properties or on those properties occupied by those least able to afford to afford to heat them. This reflects the inherent tension between the social and environmental imperatives in the field of energy poverty.

3.4 The role of the city in the energy transition In Europe there is a long-standing urban tradition, with more than 75 per cent of Europeans currently living in towns and cities. Traditionally the advantages of the densification found in cities have been related to innovation, economies of scale from agglomeration, artistic focus and creativity. More recently though the advantages of densification have become apparent in terms of the carbon footprint per household being significantly lower in cities, primarily due to the much higher use of public transportation systems, rather than private cars.

Increasingly it is recognised that it is not just buildings that need to be efficient, but rather the whole city.

Having an occasional eco-neighbourhood or 200 households living in passiv-haus homes will make little significant difference to the city's carbon footprint or to addressing its issues of traffic circulation, accessibility, waste disposal and pollution.

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The Covenant of Mayors is committed to reducing the energy consumption of the whole city including its housing, industry, public transportation and waste management systems. Town and regional planning play a key role in coordinating these activities. It is very important that people understand the need to save energy, and considerable efforts need to be put into communication of information. Ensuring people are involved and motivated is key to reducing energy consumption in the city. The ultimate aim is low energy cities with a high quality of life for all. This does not involve a retreat to the technologies and lifestyles an earlier century, but st rather developing a 21 century understanding of how to be smart about using less energy. Even if the city population stays constant, there will still be more accommodation needed, due to increased living standards, divorce and demographic changes leading to an increase in single-person households and aspiration of young people to live separately from their families etc.

More fundamental debate is needed on the definition of quality of life and the nature of progress, as well as living patterns and the role of regionalism in achieving more sustainable development. Capital cities should not be places where everything happens, because the pressure on housing and infrastructure is too strong.

There needs to be a greater emphasis on regional policy spreading the pressure away from the major cities.

What sort of model is wanted – clearly the old way did not work, so a different logic is needed as to how to develop it. A new public policy model could well encapsulate a focus on compact cities, smart housing with 30

The Covenant of Mayors is the mainstream European movement uniting local and regional authorities in the fight against climate change and in the implementation of sustainable energy policies. www.covenantofmayors.eu 26

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Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them smaller apartments, with cohousing and coworking opportunities for those who are looking for more social interaction in their life. Congestion charging, workplace parking and similar concepts can all be used to encourage an easier flow of traffic through the city Integrated urban development is a term that is commonly used, but with very little explicit understanding of what it actually means. Although five per cent of European Regional Development Fund resources are allocated at national level for integrated action for sustainable urban development, this is not enough to make any significant difference, without an appropriate framework to empower city action.

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Talking to other cities helps to share good practices. URBACT enables cities to work together to develop solutions to major urban challenges. It typically establishes local support groups for the projects it is involved with, in order to bridge conflicting interests and overcome obstacles and silo thinking, but also to give a voice to those who are most concerned but usually have little or no voice in what is happening in their neighbourhood. Intangible results are sometimes the most important ones from their activities.

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URBACT is a European exchange and learning programme promoting sustainable urban development. www.urbact.eu 27

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Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them

Keynote address 4: What is the future Oeconomy?

Pierre Calame, Chairman, Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation for Human Progress, France A roadmap is needed to find our way through the many social, economic and environmental changes that European housing providers are facing. It is a radical crisis being faced and thus radical reform is needed, developed from a genuine understanding of the causes, and not just the symptoms, of the current problems.

The issues are complex and it is always difficult to approach complexity. Many actors are involved and each has part of the knowledge, and thus policies are frequently developed in a segmented way, without linkages to other policies. Despite the difficulty inherent with complex issues, this is not a reason for them to be ignored and they should indeed be addressed, both from the top and the bottom.

Long experience around the world has shown that we have to prioritise the local reflection processes. Two key points to remember in terms of governance – firstly that it is looking towards to the future, prioritising processes not procedures and secondly, that the common good is a co-construction. At the core of governance is the management of relationships between the various actors involved and between the different levels of governance. To succeed with this local reflection process it is necessary to  Acknowledge the diversity of momentums in a local area.  Understand the relevance of informal activities.  Realise there is a diversity of situations.  Guarantee some minimal level of security or local residents will not participate in the process.  Administrative and political speeds must link into the social rhythm. Inevitably residents have short-term needs and deadlines, whereas political deadlines are mid term.  Ensure that there is a mixing of public and private funds.

What is the nature of the crisis we are facing? Is it one that brings only a temporary disturbance and afterwards everything recovers, or is it deep-rooted crisis and everything will need to change afterwards? It is the latter and consequently the governance will have to be refounded. Europe needs total radical reform.

The underlying cause of the crisis currently faced is inertia. Technologies and sciences have developed quickly, but society has developed at a slower pace and with the differential in pace, gaps have begun to appear and there is increasingly a disconnect between them. Inertia takes a variety of forms. For providers of social housing, the housing stock represents a major form of inertia. Most houses built can expect to stand for 50 to 100 years at least, and inevitably the buildings will be used by other generations and societies than those for whom they were originally built. For example, many of the homes in which people currently live were designed for middle-class white households, in a society with full employment, strong family structures and situated within an industrialised Europe. These same buildings are now required to house a much more diverse group of households, who are part of a post-industrialised society, living in different household structures with many experiencing long-term unemployment. The buildings and dwelling units need to be able to be adapted to different needs and different kinds of societies.

Visible inertia however, is not the most important factor. We also need to take into account the invisible inertia derived from our ways of thinking and doing things, often built up over generations. The way people think develops slowly, as do living conditions and ways of life and these serve to influence people’s thinking, without them even necessarily being aware of it. The British economist, John Maynard Keynes, once said that ‘practical men, who believe themselves to be exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist’, noting also that ‘the difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas, as in escaping from the old ones’. More recently the Nobel Prize winning economist, Paul Krugman, said that preconceived ideas are used to resist change. Whilst it is important to change the ways of thinking it is often difficult to do so, because there is no understanding of the need to do so. Preconceived ideas stay for a long time in education systems, as well as in institutional systems that tend not to develop and change.

An example is representative democracy, where systems invented in the 18th century still exist today, and although needs and societies have changed, this way of governance has not. Nor is it challenged. The market economy likewise goes back to the 18th century, which has nothing to do with the current reality.

These ways of thinking from several hundred years ago, whose roots we have forgotten and which have become kind of taboos, influence deeply the ways things are done today. To challenge this thinking, it is necessary to go back to the historical background in order to understand where the rules came from and thus be able to change them.

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Possible answers to our institutional way of thinking and the reality we face include: • Carry on as we were and continue to manage our societies and systems as we have done before.

• Adopt a schizophrenic approach, as for example those representatives of the European Commission who attend separate international summits and conferences on how to maximise economic growth and how to save energy.

• Look for a magic bullet way of thinking to reduce consumption and energy, whilst increasing economic growth.

• Create compound words, for example, sustainable development, green economy, whereby two contradictory words are used and by mixing them up a sense is generated that somehow the problem has been solved!

People continue to be stubborn even if they are failing. This can be seen in the approach to international negotiations, typically based on the so-called Westphalian system of identifying national interests as the prime driver. The Common Agricultural Policy is one such example of how the European Union fails to deliver sensible policy from a negotiation process. It is necessary to challenge the way we are negotiating and to recognise that whilst we seek to protect a standard of living, what is actually needed is that we should decrease it.

In terms of achieving a successful transition to a new governance model, it is necessary to:  Know what direction you are following and what roadmap is to be used. Any large transition is difficult but this clear view is necessary if it is to be achieved.  Enable grassroots and institutional thinking to move at the same time. Go-betweens can play a major role in the articulation of the two ways of thinking and it is a role that social housing organisations may be in a good position to undertake.  Understand that it is difficult to think outside of the box, when you are the box!!! When social housing is your core business it cannot be neglected and day-to-day decisions still need to be made on a routine basis.  Build up an international community between residents and neighbours. It is not only nation states that have a role to play in interaction with each other.  Consider humankind as a social subject and as a movement. Social housing organisations have a role to play in talking to others and dialogues can eventually include a learning process.  Cities will have an important part to play in the transition process. In governance, the problem is to create communities and encourage people to think of themselves as a community.  At the global level, we will need to share scarce resources. This is not easy, but if it cannot be done peacefully, wars may be waged as a result.  Move towards sharing of responsibilities since any new establishment of the social contract will only come about if there is joint responsibility.  Develop common values, moving away from an understanding of rights for some and responsibilities for others. There needs to be a shared responsibility, otherwise it is difficult to externalise costs and share accountability.

We need to reinvent how we manage societies. We have inherited the role of the big state from the past, an approach that is now outdated. We have to reinvent according to the culture and the challenges faced and establish a dynamic view of the processes, with more diversity, but better managed relationships.

We need an oeconomy for the 21st century, where the production and consumption of goods and services of a community is regarded as a whole, taking into consideration the scarce resources that we need to cope with. This is a different type of governance, based on a system that will promote the well being of all. This is not optional, it is essential. The city and region are the best scale at which to approach such a transition effectively. However, the local level today is not organised in a way to enable it to become an actor in this oeconomy. The term territories is typically associated with local authorities, not communities sharing a single destiny. As a human community, a territory is very often confused with the political communities attached to it. The most frequent definition given to it relates to physical space delimited by borders, but in reality it is something different – it is a hub of relations among internal and external actors, a crossroads of numerous 32 flows of matter, information, energy and persons. It can also be described in terms of its material and 32

Calame, P. (2012): Territories: Paradigm shifts that need to be made for the transition. Proposals for the French Rio+20 collective 29

Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them immaterial capital, a concept that is close to resilience. It will also be necessary to rethink the role of the currency and the tools that we use. Pulling together knowledge opens doors to new opportunities.



Find out more at http://www.fph.ch/?lang=en

Reflections on issues raised in the keynote address 4.1 Delivering change In terms of economic governance we need both micro or macro analysis to understand and deliver real change, recognising the complexity and diversity in the economy, rather than using a reductionist approach as we do at present.

Understandably, there is a focus on mechanisms, policies and initiatives to move forward in a short-term incremental way, seeking to make change happen locally. Although these are really important micro-policy things to do, there is ultimately only a limited amount that can be achieved in this way. Certainly in the last 25 years we keep coming up against barriers with the current economic model and there is a limit to how far we can now go with that model to effect change. To achieve real change, we need to work at the macro-level, looking at systemic change in the global economy rather than incremental steps. Energy use, wellbeing, and economic growth all need to be considered from this macro level. If serious climate change takes place for example, a very different economic approach will be needed to deal with the repercussions. It is now recognised that our main measure of progress, i.e. economic growth, is not making us any happier, what needs to be changed here? Why has serious progress not been made in the last 25 years in addressing energy poverty? Why is the lack of affordable housing not addressed, when there are so many obvious wins? These questions all indicate that a major shift is needed in our economic thinking and governance.

Such shifts do not occur frequently. The last two shifts were the move to a Keynesianism economic approach after Great Depression in the 1930s, reinforced by the Second World War and the move to Neoliberalism after the energy crisis in the early 1970s, with its deregulated global financial systems. Both changes happened when there was a major economic crisis, with the financial sector playing a major role.

The consequences of this latter shift are now being experienced around the world, to the extent that there now needs to be radical thought given to the form that a new radical shift should take.

It is a common misunderstanding that there are inviolate economic laws. This is not the case; our economic policies are actually political choices that are being made, which can be challenged. They are not unalterable economic laws, in the same way as physical laws, which govern the universe. Systemic change in economic governance it is not a win-win scenario for all, there will inevitably be winners and losers, since these are political decisions and choices have to be made. Only by exploding the myths surrounding the current system will we be able to start to build a fairer and more appropriate economic system. The key question to ask is whether the common good will benefit by the change?

How can inertia be overcome to start to deliver this change? New econometric models are needed. The current models are now out of date. They make heroic assumptions about the real world, for example, that people are rational and markets are always efficient and do not fail. They do not have banks in them as participating players, but rather as outsiders benignly providing a flow of money. The models also only have individuals in them, there is nothing in them that thinks about acting collectively. Clearly, a macro-level shift in thinking is needed if any really significant change is to be achieved.

The most important thing that needs to happen to overcome the inertia is the development of a political movement to bring these ideas into public consciousness and debate. This is not a technical issue, it is a political fight, a battle of ideas that needs to be fought. Evidence of this frustration is beginning to be seen on the streets of Brazil where questions are being asked about the current economic model and what it does for ordinary people.

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4.2 A different view of growth We are moving into a post-growth era - demographically, economically and physically. We have to think differently. We are in a period of transition and at such times it is important to think and revisit basic concepts and be able to experiment and innovate.

Humans want to progress and be seen as going beyond. They do not want to face the limits to growth that we are currently encountering. One way forward that is beginning to be seen amongst younger generations is the move away from the concept of private ownership to that of private use. For example, is the private ownership of a car necessary when for 90 per cent of the time it is not being used? It is not the private ownership that matters, but rather being able to have access to private use of a product when it is needed.

This is seen in the way that city-wide car and bicycle sharing schemes operate, how privately owned parking spaces or bedrooms can be hired as needed, how music is shared digitally rather than records being physically collected. Young people are more used to sharing things than the older generation and this is a concept that has great potential to deliver progress in a more resource efficient way. The concept of frugality - of making do, reusing, repairing and recycling - does not exist any more and needs to come to the fore again. Over 100kg of food is wasted per person in Europe per annum, compared to 6 to 11 kg in Sub33 Saharan Africa and South/Southeast Asia. The answer lies in looking to our cultural legacy, to our 33

Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (2011): Global Food Losses and Food Waste Foodhttp://www.fao.org/docrep/014/mb060e/mb060e00.pdf 31

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Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them grandparents’ generation, which was much more thrifty. We should not be looking to the American way of life is far less resource efficient and not one to be emulated.

Housing is a key social challenge as it fulfils many needs. It is also a key sector of the economy with €1.3 trillion annual turnover, and the sector is now in crisis. It is provides a key ecological challenge since it accounts for 40 per cent of energy use, 56 per cent of material flows, 25 per cent of water use, 36 per cent of CO2 emissions and 7 per cent of land use, not including any indirect flows. The limits to growth in the housing sector include the provision of housing development permits, mortgage availability, the demand for housing, availability of supporting infrastructures, the durability of the housing stock, opposition to urbanisation, lack of encouragement for self-build options. The existence of just one of these limits may be enough to stop growth.

The trend is for lower occupancy of dwellings, unoccupied houses, and larger floor space of the newly built 2 34 2 stock. With 600m of built area per person and 40m of dwelling space per person in the 27 EU Member 35 States there is more a surplus than a shortage of housing in Europe, but it is badly allocated. How Member States seek to address their empty housing stock is important in ensuring that there is access to adequate housing. The amount of empty stock varies between member states, with over 2,500,000 units in Germany standing empty, primarily because it is places where people do not wish to live. In Hungary there is also empty housing in cities where it is desperately needed e.g. in Budapest, all over the place and yet 300,000 households need housing). Smart and flexible policies are needed to deal with the diversity of housing need in Europe.

There is also the phenomena of shrinking cities, where demographic and structural economic change can mean that there are lots of good quality homes are standing empty. There are 2,500,000 such homes in Germany. What should be done – should they be demolished? Should public taxes be used to demolish what tax money built? Answers to this and many other questions will increasingly need to be answered as we begin to reconsider our definition of growth.

4.3 Involving citizens In France at least, the word governance emerged in late 1990s and can now be found in all European discourses. Governance rather than government increasingly means the abandonment of politics, with decisions taken on behalf of citizens. There needs to be a re-invasion of the political space and a redefinition of the rules of the housing market, so that the focus is on the user of the housing.

Housing cannot be treated as a normal economic good. With the number of homeless persons increasing, 150,000 homeless in France and hundreds of thousands of people about to become homeless, the consequence will be right wing emergence. Housing needs to be at the core of people's debates. It is a political challenge, not a technical one, and people need to be involved in this process. Knowledge of the expert is important, but so is the expertise of the users.

The question is how can this expertise and knowledge be accessed. How do people debate these things?

The New Economics Foundation has established a network of 600 new economy organisers - across faith groups, trade unions, environmental groups etc. who come together to identify the common values that we really need the economy to be able to deliver. It is a challenge to create the appropriate space / forum to be able to debate such issues. Many individuals see their roles in the economy as consumers and voters, but do not engage with it much more than that. Where people do engage with wider societal issues, it is often within the context of single-issue organisations, focussing for example, on the need to protect the environment, or support vulnerable groups, such as homeless persons, or those suffering abuse, hunger or violence. This disaggregated thinking however can lead to weakness in developing of a set of common values, of challenging the status quo and delivering the change needed and breaking through the glass ceiling of current economic models.

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MOSUS (2003) WP 3 – Environmental Evaluation. Built-up and associated land area increases in Europe, MOSUS Sylvia Prieler WP 3 – Environmental Evaluation. Built-up and associated land area increases in Europe. http://mosus.net/documents/MOSUS_Built-up%20land%20increases.pdf 35 Kees, D. and Haffner, M. (2010) Housing Statistics in the European Union. The Hague: Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations. OTB Research Institute for the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

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Residents have a crucial role to play in helping effect change on the ground. It is infinitely more difficult, for example, to deal with the energy retrofit of a housing block with poor energy performance when there is no mechanism for interaction between residents and the housing authority, where there is no regulatory framework or where no legal tools exist to bring action against slum landlords who prevent the renovation of the building. Likewise, the lack of any integrated land or housing policy at city level is a major barrier to engaging with residents in decisions about their neighbourhoods.

All too often, the question of social fabric is not considered in the technical discussion about housing provision. There needs to be broader discussion of these issues, opening the debate with households and individuals and moving it away from simply one of professional technocrats. One of the positive things emerging from the financial crisis is a recognition that solutions to housing problems should be adapted to meet the needs of people rather than housing providers – it will necessitate innovation and collaboration with civil society. For the most vulnerable in society, housing cannot be separated from the support needed to live in that home. Homelessness policies are not only about housing. Housing First approaches are promising in many countries, but additional services are also key, relating to unemployment services, education and health and wellbeing. Integrated thinking and policies are needed to ensure that there is an effective response to the complex needs of those who are homeless.

To identify the real issues, help solve the conflicts around them and change behaviours, effective learning and open exchange of knowledge is needed. In terms of social housing, all the actors need to be involved with the design and implementation of the local policy. Such actions are crucial, not simply a list of preferred good practices. It is important to develop a means of integrating the interests of the tenants with those of the social housing landlords and identifying housing ambassadors who will advocate for a better social and affordable housing policy and be prepared to deal with the resistance they encounter.

The International Union of Tenants is closely connected to a lot of other social movements and works to unite the interest of tenants and give them the opportunity to live in peace and dignity. The largest of the 61 national tenant organisations are situated focussed in Europe where there are large rental markets. There is an important working relationship with CECODHAS Housing Europe, the federation of public, cooperative and voluntary landlords in Europe. In this way common interests can be identified and it is important to unite these interests and go forward together. In terms of the actual housing providers themselves, it sometimes seems that they talk a lot about tenants, rather than to them, and that needs to be changed. This dialogue between landlords and tenants has to be institutionalised, as between trade unions and employers, and this will encourage more stable and firm dialogues with residents, who have a very clear idea of how they want to live.

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Concluding statement Karima Delli, MEP A question was posed earlier as to how can we accept the fact that poverty that has reached such a level in Europe. People are living in such poor conditions. There are also far too many carbon emissions. The role played here by decision makers is key. What we have to do is identify what is fair and to ensure that happens. Decision makers develop proposals and in the European Parliament we develop legislative proposals. Decision makers do not have all the solutions. They rely on grassroots stakeholders. The world of tenants and landlords are fighting each other and it is heartening that there is good cooperation between CECODHAS Housing Europe and the International Union of Tenants, this is important.

This time we have been winners! The Right to Housing has been recognised by the European Parliament.

The battle has just started, as social housing is just the first step in the longer process towards a social Europe. The next battle is to ensure that the Right to Housing for all is included in the Treaty. This is a key battle that will have to be waged.

Many Europeans can no longer afford decent housing, both in terms of rent/mortgage but also in terms of their energy usage. Many citizens are deprived of housing, living in overcrowded conditions, even if not on the streets. Over ten per cent of households are having to dedicate more than 40 per cent of their income on housing. 120 million Europeans are threatened by poverty. We have fast rising unemployment, more than 10 per cent in Europe, so we are looking at a fast rise in inequalities.

Accessing housing today is very difficult for a whole range of households. States and municipalities have to reduce expenditure in order to get out of the economic crisis - selling dwellings, imposing taxes, reducing investment. They overlook the role played by social housing as an automatic stabiliser. Finally, there is a blindness on the part of European officials, putting a constant emphasis on growth when growth does not 36 happen. They have reduced the purchasing power of the citizens. My report was adopted by the European Parliament and today we ask the European Commission and Member States to invest massively in social housing. People still want to be owners but they cannot afford it. Politicians are selling dreams. This is not their role, they are here to make positive things happen.

What is important is to show is that not all politicians are the same, not all the politics are the same, some politicians are trying to make a real change. The European Commission can go a bit too far, the principle of subsidiarity was forgotten because they now publish country-specific recommendations on the type of ineligibility of tenants in the Netherlands, criticising vat regimes on social housing. My report puts housing back where it should be and the Dutch are using my report. The European Commission should not be the enemy of social housing, they should not intervene in the definition of social housing, and it is up to the Member States and the local authorities. No harmonisation is possible as it varies so much from one country to another.

We have to encourage investment – why? In order to avoid bubbles. Social housing is a social stabiliser. It helps create jobs. Housing should be an investment for the future for the EU and part of the move to energy transition. We want structural funds to be used for social housing and this will be case. We have asked for a European Housing Observatory - did not get it this time, but will do so before too long. There are lots of tools we can use which are not tapped enough, for example European Investment Bank funds.

Housing cannot be retrofitted for improved energy overnight - you need to upgrade skills, adapt the training systems, give better value to these occupations to attract young people. The direct links between housing and health must be identified. More and more the housing stock is getting older and poor housing has a disastrous impact on people in terms of health and wellbeing. This should be prioritised. Large numbers of people in energy poverty – this should be a wake-up call for Member States to help their citizens change their behaviour.

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Delli, K. (2013) Social Housing in the European Union, Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, European Parliament, Brussels http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+REPORT+A7-20130155+0+DOC+PDF+V0//EN 34

Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them You are not born an environmentalist, you become one. Europe has a role to play and a message to send.

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Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them

Conclusions Diane Diacon, Housing Researcher and Writer, Colloquium Rapporteur Housing is at the crossroads of the social, economic and environmental pressures being experienced in Europe today. The colloquium held in June 2013 sought to address some of these issues currently faced in European countries. Participants were asked to think creatively, recognising that the welfare systems that have sustained European populations for decades are increasingly failing to meet the economic, social and environmental challenges of the day. It was not intended that this meeting should deliver specific answers and recommendations for action, but rather that it should begin a serious debate of the issues and thus encourage others to do so in the months and years to come. With 24 formal contributions to the debate and 15 reports from group discussions, there was no shortage of ideas. Contradictory views and perceptions helped to deliver a stimulating environment and a sense that there was a genuine and on-going debate to be had in this contested space.

Where is housing in the future social contract? Does it have a role, and if so what is it? This is no easy question and there are certainly no easy answers. Not only do we need to contend with the complexity deriving from the dual nature of housing itself – as a fixed, durable capital asset tradable in a wellestablished market and as a bundle of essential services providing shelter and security. We also need to recognise that welfare systems arose in different ways, and still vary significantly in the 27 Member States, with typically stronger government-based support systems in the northern countries than in the southern ones, where culturally there has been a heavier reliance on family support systems. In terms of housing, there are also significant differences in type and tenure structure. Indeed, only a few of the Member States having any significant supply of social housing, with the majority having less than six per cent of their stock in this tenure.

National governments developed these welfare and housing systems in different ways and at different times, focussing on both the capital asset role of housing through the encouragement of home-ownership, and on its service role through intervention in the rental markets, particularly through the direct provision of, and support for, social housing. In both instances a variety of different interventions have been used, reflecting national cultures and political priorities. Given the complexity and diversity of housing provision in Europe, the European Commission has, to date, left housing policy as the responsibility of national governments.

One common feature faced by virtually all Member States is that their welfare systems are now going through the most radical overhaul since they were initiated, driven less by political ideology than the lack of money to pay for them. Pressures on public finances have led to significant cuts in welfare spending, with the result that the benefits of the welfare system are increasingly targeted on those most in need. In terms of housing the debate has become increasingly focussed on the segregation and social stigmatisation of those households now eligible to live in social housing.

In recent decades asset-based or property-based welfare approaches have emerged whereby governments have encouraged individuals to be more responsible for meeting their own welfare needs by building up their assets, most typically by purchasing their own home, rather than relying on payments received from the state. With households’ ability to tap into this source of wealth to meet financial needs in future years, housing can clearly be seen to have a much more complex role within the welfare system than that of simply 37 providing an adequate physical shelter, as intended in the original Beveridge Report where it was to address one of the five “Giant Evils” of the day – squalor.

It was commonly held that the impulse towards social solidarity and equality embodied in the development of welfare systems was realised less in housing than in other areas of social provision such as health and education, and indeed housing was famously described as the wobbly pillar of the welfare state, since even in countries where housing services were well developed, the majority of housing services were provided by

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The influential report published in 1942 behind the founding of the welfare state in the United Kingdom. It identified five “Giant Evils” – Squalor, Ignorance, Want, Idleness and Disease and went on to propose widespread reform to the system of social welfare to address these.

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Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them the private market. However, it is increasingly recognised that this view needs at least to be qualified, if not 38 rejected, given the significance of people’s homes in determining their quality of life and wellbeing.

A current area of major concern, unrecognised in the time of Beveridge, is the impact that the changing climate could have on economies and social support systems and how best to address this to prevent excessive global warming over the coming decades. Since housing plays a significant role in generating the carbon emissions associated with this warming process, national governments and the European Commission are seeking to ensure that it plays a significant role in emissions reduction, in what is increasingly termed the energy transition, i.e. the move towards a much lower energy consuming society than today. The welfare-related aspect here is primarily the energy poverty faced by millions of households in Europe today.

The key ideas and thinking to emerge from the colloquium are set out below, although they are not necessarily agreed or uncontested statements. Inevitably there are many more questions than answers but they do help to build a framework, within which to look at housing and a future welfare system. They provide clear political statements of priorities and require macro-level changes to global economic and environmental policies, reflecting the view that a radical overhaul is now needed, rather than minor adjustments to the current system.

Everyone has a right to adequate housing As a basic element of a person’s life, access to adequate housing is seen as a human right and has been recognised as such by the United Nations, and most recently by the European Parliament. Adequacy is defined to include seven key elements - legal security of tenure, availability of services, materials, facilities and infrastructure, affordability, habitability, accessibility, location and cultural adequacy. From the point of view of the right to adequate housing, the most important focus has to be the poor and vulnerable, and the obligation of the state is to promote and protect their rights.

Housing should be viewed as much more than a commodity, which can be traded, but rather as a point of access for the household to other human rights. It should retain its role as a social good and its provision should not be left to the market. Its commodification over the last 30 years was responsible, in part, for the near collapse of the global financial system in 2008 and the on-going economic and social ills arising from it.

In Europe, the affordability of housing has become a major issue, with an average of 26 per cent of all households now spending more than 40 per cent of their disposable household income on their housing costs, and some spending over 60 per cent. An increasing number of households now find themselves in the widening gap between not being able to afford to house themselves in the private market and not being eligible for social housing.

Neo-liberalism and the failure of housing markets to deliver adequate housing The driving forces of globalisation and neo-liberalism over the last 30 years saw a turnaround in housing policies, with the withdrawal of national governments from direct support of the housing sector and a move towards greater reliance on the market to address housing provision. Features of this era were the rapid growth of housing finance markets, deregulation of markets and the associated banking systems, privatisation of the existing social housing stock, reduced investment in new provision and removals of rent control.

In order to promote the opportunity for international finance to take over the housing sector, two large assumptions were necessary, neither of which were true – firstly, that the state does not have a place in housing, and secondly, that the private market will be able to provide housing solutions for all. It is now widely recognised that this market-focussed approach has failed to deliver affordable housing for all.

It is now apparent that neo-liberalism is a failed approach and the current financial crisis, precipitated in part

by US sub-prime housing crisis, provides us with the best opportunity in 30 years to change our understanding of how to ensure all people can have access to decent and affordable housing.

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Fahey, T. and Norris, M. (2009) Housing and the Welfare State: An overview, UCD School of Applied Social Science, Dublin 37

Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them Transition to a new economic and governance system Previous fundamental shifts in economic thinking took place in the 1930s, with the introduction of Keynesian economics to spur the world out of depression, and in the 1970s with the introduction of neo-liberalism after the energy price crises. Many views were put forward at the colloquium saying that another such fundamental shift is now needed, due to the failure of neo-liberalism, and in the face of increasing scarcity of resources and significant climate change. New thinking is emerging in terms of closed-loop economies, where recycling and reuse mean that very few new materials are needed and very little waste is produced in the production cycle, and functional service economies which take the closed loop concept a step further, by enabling consumers to purchase the functionality of a product rather than own the product themselves, for example the car-share or bicycle-hire schemes that operate in many cities.

Calls for lifestyles based on frugal efficiency and lessons learned from the sufficiency of earlier thrifty generations, are more likely to arise from necessity than popular choice, unless they can become aspirational values in society as a whole. Such an approach in the housing sector could mean, for example, bringing empty housing and commercial buildings back into use as homes, reducing levels of underoccupation and second homes and making it easier to rent out spare rooms and unused private parking spaces.

In order to achieve these systemic changes to the global economic system, it is necessary to engage with the complexity and diversity of the issues, taking macro-level as well as micro-level action, rather than rely on more simplistic reductionist approaches. Understanding of the visible and invisible inertia that has helped to create the current economic crisis will help to address the situation. In terms of housing, the building stock represents a major form of inertia, having been built to meet the needs of a particular population, which inevitably changes over the century-long lifetime of the building. Should these houses be demolished when no longer needed? A more important question might be how to address that invisible inertia that has helped to create the mind sets of housing professionals which underlies their attitudes and certainties.

Home-ownership is not the only tenure Despite the significantly different tenure profiles in Member States there has been an increase in homeownership levels in all countries over the last 30 years or so, reflecting the national macro-economic policies developed to encourage this tenure. The idea that home-ownership is the absolute goal and everything else is inferior is now widely recognised as misguided. Not only does this lead to labour immobility and social stigmatisation of those who live in the social housing sector, it also leads to housing bubbles and the associated collapses and foreclosures. High home-ownership rates are not generally associated with stable housing systems in Europe.

On the other hand there are many advantages of home-ownership, providing as it does huge psychological benefits, as well as the opportunity to build capital assets. It is the preferred option of the majority of households for these reasons and should not be discouraged necessarily, but rather seen as one of a series of possible tenure options. Maybe it should even be encouraged at a time when prices are falling significantly? If there is a genuine wish to move away from the dominance of any one form of tenure, then the idea of tenure neutrality is one to be considered, i.e. a condition in which the consumer is financially indifferent between owning and renting a dwelling, with the housing finance and tax systems not distorting consumer choices between the two tenure options. A more diversified range of tenure options, including cohousing, community land trusts, self-build etc. would also help to reduce reliance on the limited range of tenure options.

Housing is a political, not a technical concern For too long housing provision has been perceived to be a technical issue, in the realm of markets and professionals. It is now recognised that this is a political and democratic issue, with which the wider population needs to engage. A political rather than a technical manifesto for housing is needed and a political debate needs to be raised to challenge the inadequacy of the housing conditions that many millions of households have to live with, be they slum housing conditions, poor quality homes that cannot be heated adequately, overcrowding, homelessness or poor quality neighbourhoods.

Greater political leadership is needed from the United Nations and within Europe. How poor and vulnerable people are housed, and the adequacy of housing for many millions more, are political decisions, not technical ones. The rise of right-wing politics in Europe finds ammunition in the shortage of housing – local

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Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them houses for local people is a common anti-immigration message. Make no mistake, this is a political struggle that needs to be faced, not avoided.

A call for evidence-based policymaking There is comparatively little strong evidence for many of the statements frequently made regarding social housing. Whom does it house – who are the most vulnerable, what do we mean by the poor? Over 65 million people currently live in socially rented homes throughout Europe – are they all poor or vulnerable? Does living in social housing keep you poor? What is the evidence that social housing can successfully encourage social mix or social integration? Do more welfare-targeted approaches actually increase social exclusion?

What impact does poor quality housing have on people’s health? There are many assumptions made, but often little, or conflicting, evidence to support them.

If national or European policy makers are to understand and facilitate the role that social housing can play within European welfare systems, there needs to be a body of consistent evidence to enable them to do so in an informed way. The development of a European Housing Observatory to report on the housing situation at EU level and assist in gathering evidence for an informed European strategy in relation to the housing sector, would be one way forward.

Housing and the energy transition The requirements to achieve significant energy savings and create employment in Europe has led to the development of the concept of the Green Economy, frequently seen as a win-win escape route from the twin crises. This however was shown to be a simplistic understanding, with substantial confusion as to what the term actually means, and the policies necessary to deliver it. Member States frequently find themselves subsidising both fossil fuels and green energy and rarely is the social impact or welfare implications of the energy transition considered.

It may make sense socially to subsidise energy prices in the short-term to reduce levels of energy poverty until retrofitting of existing properties can be completed. It does not do so environmentally or economically, given that the retrofitting process will take decades to complete since even the most efficient end committed Member States are struggling to deliver their targets in this area. Efforts to include both social and environmental objectives into policy instruments have proved too complex and separate policies are preferred, albeit containing a cross reference to other objectives. As fossil fuel prices rise in the future, the issue of addressing energy poverty is likely to have a major impact on welfare budgets in terms of income support and healthcare costs.

For an effective energy transition, it is important to focus on more than just environmentally responsible buildings or even eco-neighbourhoods. An integrated city-wide approach is needed that incorporates public transportation systems, industry and waste management systems, as well as housing. Having the occasional eco-neighbourhood or block of passiv-housing is not going to make any real difference at the end of the day.

The scale of action needs to be much larger.

Working with civil society Frequent calls were made for the greater engagement of residents and wider civil society and NGOs in developing the new thinking around global economics and the energy transition in people’s homes, neighbourhoods and cities. As users of social housing, resident engagement in the decision-making processes of social housing providers is still often token or perfunctory. If the focus of housing provision is to be on the user, a much deeper level of engagement is needed than at present. How can this be achieved?

How do you influence what happens in your city, where is the space where you can make your voice heard?

How can people come together to identify their common values and envision what is best not just for their neighbourhood, but for the wider economic framework in which they live.

Individual behaviour is a key element in saving energy, the engagement of people is absolutely essential, both in and outside of their homes. The aspirational values of a resource conscious society have as yet to make a significant difference to how most people lead their lives. Inspiration and leadership are needed to ensure that people can share in a different understanding and vision for the future.

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Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them Where next for social housing providers?

Social housing providers occupy a key role in that they understand well the economic and social pressures on their residents, as well as the limitations and inefficiencies of their national welfare systems. They are leading much of the work on energy saving through new construction and retrofitting of their existing housing stock and working with their residents to improve understanding and the need for behavioural change to minimise energy costs. They work with a range of financial and government stakeholders and crucially have the opportunity to interact with their tenants and local communities in their decision-making processes.

If wider economic and energy transition is to become a reality, social housing providers throughout Europe need to be actively taking a role in that process.

You may find PowerPoint Presentation of the Conclusions at the CECODHAS Housing Europe official Slideshare Profile http://fr.slideshare.net/CECODHAS/cecodhas-housing-europe-summer-colloquium-2013-conclusions

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Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them

Appendix 1 Contributors to the CECODHAS Housing Europe Colloquium The following persons all made a formal contribution to the meeting, either by giving a key-note address, providing a response or introducing and chairing one of the sessions, as well as contributing to the group discussions with all colloquium participants. 

Christophe André, Economics Department, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development- Reflection to Keynote Address 2

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Pierre Calame, Founder, Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation- Keynote Address 4

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Darinka Czischke, Director, Building and Social Housing Foundation- Chair Keynote Address 2

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Karima Delli, MEP, European Parliament- Concluding Statement

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Wolfgang Förster, Chair, Housing and Land Management Committee, United Nations Economic Commission for Europe- Chair Keynote Address 3

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Raymond Hencks, Member, European Economic and Social Committee

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Erica Hope, EU Affairs Manager for Energy Efficiency, European Climate Foundation

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Tim Jenkins, Director, External Affairs and the Great Transition, New Economic FoundationRespondant Keynote Address 4

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Jean-Marie Jungblut, Research Officer, Living Conditions and Quality of Life Unit, European Foundation for Living and Working- Keynote Address 2

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Bertrand Lapostolet, Director of Energy Poverty, Abbé Pierre Foundation

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Emmanuel Moulin, Director, URBACT- Diverging/ converging Perspectives KA 4

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Özgür Oener, Vice-President, CECODHAS Housing Europe- Opening speech & Conclusions

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Jan Olbycht, MEP, President of the Urban Intergroup of the European Parliament- Welcome speech

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Sebastien Olivier, International Affairs Manager, Social Housing Company of Quebec

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Emmanuel Olliver, Salvation Army, France

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Alain Regnier, Inter-Ministerial Delegate for the fight against homelessness, France- Reflection to Keynote Address 1

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Raquel Rolnik, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing- Keynote Address 1

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Domenico Rossetti di Valdalbero, Principal Administrator, DG Research and Innovation, European Commission- Respondant Keynote Address 3

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Andreas Rüdinger, Research Fellow, Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations- Keynote Address 3

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François Schneider, RESPONDER Project

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Freek Spinnewijn, Director, European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless- Diverging/ converging Perspectives KA 2

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Barbara Steenbergen, EU Representative, International Union of Tenants- Diverging/ converging Perspectives KA 4

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Elena Szolgayová, Director, Housing Ministry of Slovakia- Diverging/ converging Perspectives KA 4

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Ian Turner, Project Manager, Energy Cities- Diverging/ converging Perspectives KA 3

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Agnes Uhereczky, Director, Confederation of Family Organisations in Europe

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Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them List of Figures

Figure 1

Working age households where no-one is working

Figure 2

At-risk-of-poverty rate in Europe, 2007 and 2011

Figure 3

Changing income inequality, 1981 – 2010

Figure 4

Difficulty making ends meet

Figure 5

Arrears on utility and housing costs, 2003 – 2011

Figure 6

Likelihood of having to leave current accommodation in next six months due to unaffordability, 2007 and 2011

Figure 7

Problems in the neighbourhood, urban and rural

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Where is housing in the future contract?

Housing in time of welfare transformation: new challenges and how to answer them

25 Years

The European Federation of Public, Cooperative and Social Housing

www.housingeurope.eu info@housingeurope.eu

@housingeurope Access more publications online www. issuu.com/cecodhas

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