The Housing Partnership is aware that a growing number of countries, regions with legislative powers and cities are currently exploring solutions to provide for affordable housing for their citizens. This does not only concern concrete housing projects, be it new construction or renewal of existing stock. It also regards policy recommendations on a more general basis. In order to meet the need for more data and policy advice on affordable housing solutions, the Housing Partnership identified two actions as instruments to help cities, housing providers and others to develop projects and policies.

The "toolkit for affordable housing" is a draft database to be further developed both content-wise and technically. At present, it contains 26 different projects. In a next step, Housing Partnership will identify and prioritize possible elements of governance to be added (e.g. diversity of supply systems, tenants´ protection etc.).

The second is a set of guidelines for policy making to enable cities (and possibly other authorities) to develop not only good housing projects, but also good housing policies. The European Responsible Housing Intiative (ERHIN) as well theUN Geneva Charter on Sustainable Housingcould serve as already agreed upon sets of guidelines. An idea to be shared with others is whether the categories identified as crucial for decent housing in the context of Corporate Social Responsibility and fair as well as ethical housing production could also serve as guidelines to EU funding and other financial instruments on EU-level.

This would create more visibility for this important project, we hope.

Toolkit for affordable housing

The European Responsible Housing IntiativeERHIN

 UN Geneva Charter on Sustainable Housing