“The importance of social justice and social rights, including the right to adequate housing, for maintaining democratic stability has been recognised by all Council of Europe member States, both at the 2023 Reykjavik summit and the 2024 conference on the European Social Charter in Vilnius. However, it is only by following a joint, multilevel approach that we will overcome the current housing crisis in Europe,” stressed Congress Rapporteur Doris Kampus (Austria, SOC/G/PD), in Geneva on 2 October 2024, adding that this was the approach promoted by the Congress in its upcoming report on social housing innovations.
Speaking at the 85th session of the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE)’s Committee on Urban Development, Housing and Land Management, she recalled that the right to adequate housing remained a fundamental human right, enshrined in key international and European standards, including the Revised European Social Charter of the Council of Europe.
The Rapporteur underlined that the current crisis was partly due to the retrenchment of welfare states and the decline in social housing, and highlighted the imperative of strengthening public, social, community and co-operative housing as possible responses supporting both the European middle class and the most vulnerable groups (such as elderly people, youth, national minorities or migrants and refugees) in their access to affordable housing.
