The International Social Housing Festival

Last Friday (16 June) TPAS Cymru were invited to take part in a debate at the International Social Housing Festival. The Festival, which was held in Amsterdam over a number of days, explored a number of different aspects of social housing, with a view to preparing the sector for future challenges and surprises. The Festival was attended by individuals from all over the world and included housing professionals, policy makers, academics and tenants, providing a fruitful environment for sharing ideas and best practice.  

TPAS Cymru was invited to take part in one of the Festival’s session, “Tenants’ interests in European cities”. The session was organised by the Amsterdam Tenants’ Association with participants from all over Europe been invited to join in via skype. TPAS Cymru was represented in the debate by Steffan Evans, who was joined by three other principle speakers; Jasminke Husanović Tadić, of the Association of Tenants, Tuzla (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Tadeaus Staromestan, Chairman of the Organization for the Right to Housing, Bratislava (Slovakia), and Antoni Vidal, Director of Social Housing Neighbourhood Federation of Catalonia, Barcelona (Spain).

The session focused on some of the challenges encountered by social housing tenants and the social housing sector more broadly in all four nations. It was interesting to note that despite the diverse nature of all four cities, a number of common challenges were present. One such challenge was the lack of availability of affordable housing, in particular, a lack of social housing. There were numerous reasons for this shortage in social housing, some being unique to each individual city. For example, in Barcelona, the prevalence of tourism had led to the city centre becoming unaffordable for most local residents, placing pressure on the housing stock in the city as a whole. In Tuzla and Bratislava, however, a significant rise in owner occupation following the fall of communism had led to a shortfall in the number of properties that were available for rent in all tenures, including the social rented sector.

Another common challenge that the participants in all four nations faced was how to get young people engaged with their landlords and how to get them politically active. Technology was felt to be a particularly powerful tool when seeking to boost participation, with the other participants showing interest in the work being undertaken by TPAS Cymru in seeking to encourage a greater use of video communication within the sector in Wales. The group and the audience were also eager to hear more about Tenant Pulse, and how TPAS Cymru was hoping to engage with hard to each tenants in new ways.

A further subject that was discussed was how to make housing a more politically important issue. This discussion was particularly interesting given that as in Wales, there is also a degree of devolution in both Spain and Bosnia and Herzegovina. This meant that the Social Housing Neighbourhood Federation of Catalonia, and the Association of Tenants Tuzla, faced common difficulties to TPAS Cymru when trying to deal with policies and legislation being developed in more than one Parliament/ Assembly. As in Wales, constitutional affairs were also felt to be dominating the political landscape in Catalonia. Much like Brexit in the UK, the upcoming referendum on Catalan independence was felt to dominate political conversations in Barcelona. It was interesting to hear and to learn from the approaches being undertaken by the Social Housing Neighbourhood Federation of Catalonia in seeking to assure that housing was not a policy area that got forgotten about during this debate.

Everyone at TPAS Cymru would like to thank the Amsterdam Tenants’ Association for the invitation to join in the debate online and we look forward to working with you again in future.