A European Deal for Housing
Section
Event Description
Housing is a precondition for achieving personal wellbeing, for social participation, for integrating into society and for contributing to a fair and inclusive society. It is a major element in our fight for a more social Europe: leaving no one behind also means leaving no one without a decent and affordable home! At the same time, it will be a key component of a truly European Green Deal through the upcoming Renovation Wave Strategy, which aims at scaling up the energy renovation of the building stock and at tackling energy poverty.
Local and regional politicians have experience in the provision of housing on a daily basis. They are also familiar with the difficulties coming from the lack of financing to actually build new dwellings or from conflicting EU legislations in policy areas linked to housing. These create obstacles for established schemes at local and regional level to support affordable and sustainable housing.
To tackle these challenges, progressive cities and regions have taken innovative actions and can inspire us with their initiatives. At the same time, through various initiatives, cities are partnering up. They are asking for Europe’s help in tackling the social, economic and sustainability aspects of the housing crisis, all of which have been exacerbated even more by the coronavirus pandemia.
As part of the European Week of Regions and Cities 2020, the PES Group workshop on A European Deal for Housing aims to identify the obstacles met by local and regional politicians to finance affordable and sustainable housing through European funds (the cohesion funds, the recovery plan or InvestEU in particular) to identify progressive solutions and best practices, and to list core policy demands to European policy-makers that could feed into the European Parliament's report “Access to decent and affordable housing for all”.
A strong future cohesion policy and a European Deal for Housing need to go hand in hand!
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