28-11-07 

"Housing remains a central concern for citizens and cities. Social housing providers and municipal authorities have a lot to do together to improve quality of life, social incusion, labour mobility and environment in European cities" said Paul-Louis Marty at the EUROCITIES annual conference.

CECODHAS President, Mr. Paul-Louis Marty was invited to take part to a workshop on new challenges for social housing. The aims of the workshop were firstly to provide an overview of the role of housing in the efforts made to adapt to the demographic and social changes in European cities and secondly to help Eurocities members (major Eurpean cities) to think about issues that could be covered by a future Working Group on Housing.

In his intervention, Paul-Louis Marty stresses that housing remains at the centre of EU citizens’ concerns ( in terms of ageing, intergenerational solidarity, increasing diversity…). Explaining how the missions of social housing organisations have been accordingly adapted, he stressed that the organisations find themselves to offer new services to their tenants (support for financial inclusion, awareness raising campaigns to encourage them to save energy, social and health related services, reinsertion on the labour market, …) and they often provide these services in partnership with local organisations and the municipal authorities. Concluding on the necessary conditions for social housing to be a key instruments to reinforce solidarity at the local level, he reminded the importance of cooperation with cities both in terms of exchange of good practices and lobbying actions at the EU level, for example in order to promote the subsidiarity as well as the specificity of local services.

Among other panellists, M. Ivan Tosics (Metropolitan Research Institute, Budapest) presented the situation of housing in Eastern European Cities, M. Michele Calandrino (Unit Social Inclusion, European Commission) presented the importance that the Commission grants to social housing as an instrument for active inclusion strategy, and Pieter Pol (City of Rotterdam) presented the housing issues that are of great importance for cities at the moment and in the future: affordability, legal status, segregation.

As a result of this workshop, Eurocities members have been urged to send proposals of themes for the creation of a Working Group on housing issues. Eurocities secretariat, which is determined to work in cooperation with CECODHAS on that issue, will examine the proposals and a decision will be taken by the end of January 2008.

To download, Paul-Louis Marty’s intervention, click here

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