Housing Europe: Working committee meetings highlights
A few days after the Working Committee meetings in Brussels, Housing Europe has gathered the highlights from all five sessions ahead of the detailed reports that will follow shortly.
The Urban Affairs committee dealt firstly with the EU funding opportunities on urban development and housing. The new programme URBACT III for cities aiming to carry out integrated urban development strategies is an interesting opportunity. Although Housing Europe members will not be systematically eligible (it has to be entities governed by public law), supporting and feeding into networks of cities on relevant topics (such has integration of migrants, dealing with youth poverty) is crucial for Housing Europe and its members. The calls for proposals will be published soon on the Housing Europe website
On a second point, members of Housing Europe presented the state of play on the preparation of the use of Structural Funds. While some member states will use funds for urban regeneration and innovation purposes with a housing element in there, some others have decided not to use this opportunity. Eventually member states in central and eastern Europe will use funds for the renovation of housing (mostly in the form of subsidised loans). Housing Europe will do a more precise monitoring of the use of the funds in the coming months and are considering an event with an eastern and central European focus in the Autumn.
Housing Europe members discussed the topic of cooperation with big cities (Eurocities) with the view of lobbying on the issue of the definition of Services of General Economic Interest and the need to preserve the freedom of cities/local authorities to define, fund and organise social housing activities according to the needs on the ground.
The Housing Europe Observatory met to mainly discuss the forthcoming State of Housing report that will be presented on 5 May at the Economic and Social Committee in Brussels. This report will contain a wide range of information on housing market trends, statistics on affordability, indebtedness as well as chapter on EU policies impact the social housing sector.
Housing Europe held their meetings in the Social Platform meeting room. For more information and bookings, please click here.
