On June 11, the Plenary Session of the European Parliament (EP) voted in favour of an initiative report on social housing in the European Union, drafted by Karima Delli MEP (France, Greens/European Free Alliance). European, local and regional representatives have meanwhile launched a petition for a European social housing action framework. In the same vein, the World Health Organization (WHO) has recently published a new sectoral briefing on housing.
The EP report acknowledges the role of the social housing sector in combating poverty and promoting inclusion and social cohesion and
- promotes the social and economic role of social housing,
- highlights the importance of a European Social Housing Policy and
- encourages investment to boost local employment and the green economy.
Moreover, the European Parliament pointed out the following main messages to other decision makers:
- The provision of social housing is one of the ways in which public authorities respond to the shortcomings of the market, with the aim of ensuring universal access to decent, affordable housing.
- There is an urgent social need for investment in the social housing sector. Europe is experiencing a severe, long-term housing crisis which might well be escalating, despite the regular stirrings of public opinion, EU-wide, during the winter, when it seems that homelessness problems cannot be allowed to continue.
- Social inclusion necessarily requires a sufficient supply of affordable, good-quality social housing as part of the response to health challenges.
- Investment in social housing is also a means of responding to population ageing, the needs of elderly people, and the specific needs of young people. It is also a way of including and meeting the needs of marginalised communities and the homeless.
– Petition of European local and regional representatives for a European social housing action framework
The petition emphasises the importance of housing in the European Union where some 44 million citizens are at risk of poverty and where housing often accounts for more than 40% of a household’s budget. Access to housing should not be seen as an objective in isolation, but be a priority of economic and social policy formulation in the European Union and the member states.
This petition has been initiated by Alain Hutchinson, elected member of the European Committee of the regions and author of the report “towards an EU agenda for social housing”
– Avaaz’s petition for a European social housing action framework
– Social determinants of health WHO – Sectoral briefing
In its recently published report, the WHO put forward the following recommendations for both the housing and health sectors:
- the need to enhance surveillance systems for monitoring housing and health policies using disaggregated data on population groups and indicators to uncover equity impacts;
- the need to develop guidelines, standards and recommendations on housing-related risk factors and dissemination of technical guidance as a shared responsibility for both health and housing actors;
- the need to create citizens’ dialogue platforms to influence urban planning and zoning decisions to ensure the opinions of affected vulnerable groups are taken into consideration;
- the need to boost cooperation on the development of policies related to evictions and resettlement, and the mitigation of impacts on affected populations;
- the need to foster joint capacity building in the housing and health sectors to improve understanding of health and housing inter-linkages by government actors, and
- the need to increase shared capacity building in communities to encourage and facilitate opportunities for joint action.
Background – about the importance of housing as a key social determinants of health
As EPHA emphasised in its briefing on health inequalities, there are unfair but avoidable differences in health status across different socioeconomic groups in society – usually the result of an uneven distribution of social and environmental determinants of health. Housing is one of those key determinants along with education, employment and health services.
Neither health professionals nor health policymakers are able to tackle health inequalities in the housing sector without the support and cooperation of their colleagues in the fields of housing. This made the case for a joint seminar between EPHA, CECODHAS Housing Europe and the European Parliament Urban Intergroup on 22 January 2013.
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Next steps
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As EPHA indicated recently, CECODHAS Housing Europe will hold a colloquium on the question “ Where is housing in the future social contract?” in Leuven (Belgium) on 24th and 25th June.
The colloquium‘s objective is to look at Europe from the outside, where our strong social contract is highly admired.
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EPHA related articles
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