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PUBLIC SERVICES INTERNATIONALThe global union federation of workers in public services

STRONG PUBLIC

AND SOCIAL

HOUSING SERVICES:A key asset in halting global pandemics

2 STRONG PUBLIC AND SOCIAL HOUSING SERVICES:

A KEY ASSET IN HALTING GLOBAL

PANDEMICS

Strong public

and social

housing services:

by Daria Cibrario

More than 3.9 billion people1 - half of the world’s population – were ordered into lockdown as of April 2020 so as to halt

the spread of Covid-19. But how can lockdown or-ders realistically stop contagion when more than 1.8 billion people worldwide lack adequate hous-ing, over one billion live in informal settlements, 150 million are homeless and millions more suffer from insecurity of tenure?2

The Covid-19 epidemic has established a new level of interdependency which cuts across social sta-tus and connects the health and wellbeing of us all, as the inability of some to go into lockdown can result in the contamination and death of others. By magnifying vulnerability and hitting the most fragile members of society harder, the pandemic has ful-ly exposed the ravages caused by social inequal-ity, of which the global housing crisis is a major component.

Lack of access to affordable, decent housing, forced evictions and insecurity of tenure are a daily reality for millions of working poor, informal workers, slum dwellers and homeless people. This is often accompanied by a lack of access to vi-tal public services including water, sanitation and electricity, thus providing perfect conditions for the virus to spread3. The tragedy of migrants and refugees held in appalling conditions in congested camps and detention centres adds to this system-ic failure and breach of human rights4, exacerbat-ing tensions with local communities5.

3A KEY ASSET IN HALTING GLOBAL PANDEMICS

THE GLOBAL HOUSING CRISIS:

A TRAGEDY FOR WORKERS

Children in a slum in India, © Shutterstock, 2020

Covid-19 is causing mass economic hardship and income loss for millions, hitting the most vulnerable harder by pushing the working poor, informal and mi-grant workers, slum dwellers and the homeless into unemployment and poverty. This situation is especial-ly desperate for the 5.2 billion people (71 percent of the world’s population) with inadequate or no social protection coverage6. In the absence of prompt, ex-traordinary measures to support income and mitigate the social impact of the crisis, many more will be evicted or dispossessed as they become unable to pay their rents and mortgages. Shockingly, some are now even losing their accommodation because of the stigma associated with having fallen ill with the virus or because they work in frontline public services, as doctors and nurses for example7. Well before Covid-19, a lack of affordable homeown-ership and rentals had already pushed a majority of workers - including those in vital services such as health care, social services and care of the elderly, waste, public transport and education - now celebrat-ed as ‘heroes’ - to the edge of, or outside, their cities.

These workers now have to endure long commutes and often live in precarious conditions with scant ac-cess to the same services they provide to those able afford to live in more affluent areas8. While housing inequality has long been a harsh reality for millions in emerging countries, it is now increasingly common in high income ones, too, including in countries where public and social housing stock and services used to exist.

The data is telling: in 52 countries out of 102, work-ers on an average salary must save their entire income for 10 years in order to be able to purchase accom-modation in the country where they live9. In Canada, real estate prices in the Greater Toronto area have in-creased by 425 percent over the last 30 years, while median household wages have increased by only 133 percent10. In Australia, 28,600 full-time workers were homeless in 2018, representing 16.5 percent of the country’s total homeless population11. This data shows that full-time permanent work is not a guaran-tee of access to affordable and adequate housing.

4 STRONG PUBLIC AND SOCIAL HOUSING SERVICES:

THE PRIVATISATION OF

PUBLIC AND SOCIAL

HOUSING SERVICES

HAS FAILED

© Shutterstock, 2020

Housing is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as essential to the right to an adequate standard of living and well-being12. It also appears as a priority target in global policy frameworks, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)13, the 2015 Geneva UN Charter on Sustainable Housing to “ensure access to decent, adequate, affordable and healthy housing for all14”, and in the New Urban Agenda15. For the former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing, Leilani Farha, “housing is a human right and a primary human need, not a commodity16”. States have committed them-selves to upholding this right and are responsible for its implementation. Yet, many governments have overlooked their housing responsibilities for decades, relying instead on private develop-ers, real estate investors, foreign aid and chari-ties to provide much-needed housing solutions.

Over the past decades, housing has become fi-nancialised and a favourite target of large private and corporate investors, banks, private equity and pension funds. These actors have used it

5A KEY ASSET IN HALTING GLOBAL PANDEMICS

as an asset to park capital or seek new profit outlets, as margins in traditional investment in production and services have declined and bank interest rates have stagnated. Property investment has also become a fa-vourite avenue for money laundering. This involves a triangular scheme whereby organised crime sells legal-ly acquired apartments, buildings, hotels, and restau-rants to its own offshore companies at inflated prices, thus maximising the amounts of bleached money17. A recent EU study entitled “Who owns the city?” shows the direct adverse impact of urban housing market fi-nancialization on affordability18.

In 2016, the global worth of residential real estate was valued at 163 trillion USD, more than half the value of all global assets and more than twice the world’s total GDP19. This trend has caused land and housing prices to soar, making cities unaf-fordable for locals, pushing inhabitants and work-ers to the outskirts or expelling them from cities, and leaving the most vulnerable on the streets, whilst homelessness has been criminalised in many places20. The rise of mass tourism and the popularisation of online short-term rental plat-forms have exacerbated this phenomenon.

Conversely, public investment in the sector keeps falling. In the EU alone, the investment gap in social housing stands at 57€ billion per year21. Where they existed, public and social housing services have been scaled down or liquidated. Governments embracing neoliberal policies have encouraged housing market deregulation and the sale of public housing and local-government land stocks by promoting - and in some cases subsi-dizing - their private purchase by means of tax breaks and low-interest loans. The generalised failure to address real-estate speculation at a na-tional and global level has further resulted in the sale of housing stocks leading to deeper urban gentrification, social segregation and inequality in many cities and metropolitan areas worldwide. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, Madrid sold over 1,800 social housing units to the pri-vate equity firm Blackstone for 128,5€ million. As of 2018, the value of those same apartments had risen by 227 percent22.

Although the legal frameworks underpinning housing policies and the allocation of resources are typically set at a national level, it is often local and regional governments that are responsible for the implementation of local housing develop-ment and for managing public and social housing stocks and related services. As the global trends in urbanisation, widening inequality and mass dis-placements accelerate due to war, migration and the climate crisis, the role of local governments in housing policies is more important than ever. Yet, their resources, powers and institutional ca-pacities are often inadequate to effectively curb real-estate speculation and uphold the right to housing in their territories.

6 STRONG PUBLIC AND SOCIAL HOUSING SERVICES:

LOCAL GOVERNMENT STRATEGIES TO PROVIDE EMERGENCY

LOCKDOWN ACCOMMODATION DURING THE COVID-19 CRISIS

La Défense city, Paris, © Shutterstock, 2020

The convergence of the global housing and global pan-demic crises has meant that local governments face major challenges in accommodating people properly during quarantine. They have therefore sought emer-gency measures, and set up new services, to enable a proper lockdown and contain the spread of the virus in their communities.

Emergency measures taken by cities include:

z Setting up temporary shelters in public buildings (army barracks, sport infrastructures, neighbourhood social centres, empty public buildings, universities, City Halls, etc.);

z Requisitioning or renting private hotel rooms at preferential rates to enable self-isolation;

z Creating multidisciplinary mobile public-service teams composed of health, social, and security workers to carry out testing, deliver treatment and take care of vulnerable people directly in situ;

z Strengthening the availability of shelters and support to victims of domestic violence, cases of which have spiked following lockdown orders23;

z Providing “sanitation points” with running water and soap in different urban locations to facilitate access to proper handwashing, especially where such essential services are difficult to access or unsafe.

Cities have also sought to mitigate the effects of the crisis on the income of precarious tenants by:

z Lowering, deferring or forgoing payments on public and social housing rentals for tenants who have

z suffered a loss of income; z Passing moratoriums on evictions and repossessions; z Negotiating with real estate agencies, landlords and banks to encourage them to defer rents and payments for vulnerable residential and commercial tenants;

z Postponing municipal and other local taxes; z Mandating continued essential services (electricity, water, gas, etc.), even in case of non-payment by households suffering economic hardship24.

Whilst these measures go in the right direction in con-fronting the pandemic, it is vital to find stable solutions to the global housing crisis. In order to do so, central governments need to support local government efforts through stable intergovernmental transfers and effec-tive policy coordination. At the same time, international institutions must adequately consider local govern-ments’ needs regarding public and social housing solu-tions in their rescue packages.

7A KEY ASSET IN HALTING GLOBAL PANDEMICS

TRADE UNIONS PUSH FOR STRONGER

PUBLIC AND SOCIAL HOUSING

Public service unions often represent public and social housing service workers and have expert understand-ing of housing issues in local communities. In the wake of the pandemic, they are demanding that all levels of government take ambitious, long-lasting action to en-sure that low paid workers, homeless and vulnerable people are properly sheltered and can, where neces-sary, access support services, delivered by adequate levels of staffing under decent conditions25. They are also demanding that workers who lose their income do not also lose a roof over their heads, thus putting their lives and those of others at risk. These demands come on top of long-lasting union actions and cam-paigns, which existed well before Covid-19, in favour of strengthening public and social housing services.

In the United Kingdom, access to decent, safe, secure, and affordable housing is a huge challenge. Local coun-cils in England have 1.15 million people on social hous-ing waiting lists26. In January 2020, the public service union UNISON launched the “Housing Manifesto”27, a comprehensive strategy to uphold the right to housing for all, that calls on the UK government to:

z Restore direct investment in public housing through upfront capital grants;

z Require that new social rented homes meet the highest environmental, building, safety, space, energy efficiency and accessibility standards;

z Provide long-term funding certainty for local councils and allow them to retain 100 percent of capital receipts to invest in homes;

z Ensure the council and social rented housing service is adequately funded and resourced.

In the context of Covid-19, UNISON, alongside housing campaigners, including the Homes for All Campaign28, is urging the UK Government to introduce stronger measures to ensure no one is left on the street home-less or loses a roof over their heads due to the pan-demic. The union is calling on the UK government to protect tenants and homes by:

z Suspending all evictions for the duration of the pandemic;

z Suspending rent demands for struggling renters, with measures similar to those provided for struggling homeowners;

z Providing councils with adequate funding to house the vulnerable during and after the pandemic;

z Improving welfare support for renters by raising housing benefit to cover average rents in local areas;

z Scrapping spare room penalties and the two-child limit on housing benefits;

z Providing grant funding in the long term to enable councils to build 150,000 social rented homes per year for vulnerable and low-paid households29.

Covid-19 has also brought back into focus fire safety issues, as thousands of people in the UK still live in houses that are far from fire-proof and have had to go into lockdown there. Fire safety has been brought to the forefront of the public debate around housing since the horrific 2017 Grenfell fire in London, which caused 72 deaths, mostly among low-paid, migrant workers30. Despite this, many Grenfell tower survivors have yet to be re-housed31.

Australia is another country where public and so-cial-housing services have been axed despite being sorely needed. In 2017, 420,000 Australian house-holds were living in public and community housing and over 200,000 more were on waiting lists32. The Australian Services Union (ASU) has campaigned to stop defunding of public housing in Australia, but with the Liberal Party in power since 2018, cuts have con-tinued. The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) refused to work on the demolition of the Sirius building33 - one of the last public housing compounds in Sydney - with the land being sold by the state government34 to a private developer.

During the peak of the pandemic, France was under strict lockdown and yet every night the country count-ed approximately 22,000 people sleeping rough on the streets35. Ten million people live in social housing, ac-commodated in 4.5 million social housing units which actually generate more income (74.4 billion EUR) than they cost to maintain (41.7 billion EUR). Despite this, the French government initiated an in-depth restructuring of its public and social housing institutions in 2017, pushing them towards a market-based approach.

The 2018 “Elan’ law”36 cut the budget for state loans for social housing by 3.5€ billion over three years, whilst maintaining tax breaks for private developers. It also forced local social housing bodies to sell their assets

8 STRONG PUBLIC AND SOCIAL HOUSING SERVICES:

© Shutterstock, 2020

on the free market in order to raise funds to finance their services. This was an attempt to compensate for a decline in public income support for individual house-holds and it transformed these social housing bodies into commercial real-estate agencies responsible for managing the leftover social housing stock. The law also mandated local government social housing offices to merge, making them less accessible to tenants and to local councils, which is where local decisions about social housing are made. Finally, it raised the house-hold income threshold for social housing with a view to limiting it to only very low-income families.

As precarious jobs and low retirement pensions are in-creasingly prevalent amongst the French population, the CGT Public Services union is against the commod-ification of French public housing policies and empha-sises the key role public housing can play in the fight against energy poverty and climate change. The union demands major public investment and a revival of social and public housing through the following measures:

z Halting the sale and privatisation of public and social housing;

z Investing massively to expand the provision of public and social housing and to renovate existing stock in an energy-saving and climate-friendly manner;

z Regulating the real-estate market at a national and local level to ensure affordable rentals and prices in all areas, breaking up social and territorial segregation and

ensuring a balanced social mix by controlling prices in critical urban areas (Paris, Lyon, Marseille etc.);

z Lowering the proportion of an average household budget spent on housing to 20 percent and making social housing accessible to different groups;

z Reducing land speculation in urban centres by means of progressive urban policies which introduce a functional mix (housing, jobs, public services, green spaces, etc.) into every neighbourhood;

z Halting the use of artificial soils, which aggravate biodiversity loss37.

Canada is estimated to have 235,000 homeless peo-ple38. The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) has long demanded an effective National Housing Strategy that fully upholds housing as a human right, ends homelessness by 2030 and regulates the private housing market. Canadian municipalities and provinces lack funds to enhance and maintain an aging housing stock. CUPE’s position is that the federal government must provide substantial public funding and land to en-hance the stock of social housing. A coordinated effort across all levels of governments and across municipal-ities is needed to curb housing market speculation, which has made living in cities unaffordable for most Canadian working households39.

9A KEY ASSET IN HALTING GLOBAL PANDEMICS

HOUSING FOR PEOPLE, NOT FOR PROFIT:

RECLAIMING AND (RE)BUILDING STRONG

PUBLIC AND SOCIAL HOUSING FOR ALL

As cities are forced to develop new measures and adapt policies to deal with Covid-19, public and social housing are clearly emerging as an essential part of the solution to beating pandemics and protecting public health in the medium and long term. Whilst the promo-tion of market-led housing policies is still widespread at a global level, some local governments are joining forces to swim against the tide, and are demonstrating that alternatives work.

Faced with a 100 percent surge in rental prices since 2015, Berlin’s local government has frozen rental pric-es at June 2019 levels for five years and repurchased 670 apartments that were to be sold to the real estate holding Deutsche Wohnen. This move spared tenants disproportionate rent rises due to superfluous reno-vations imposed by the company40. In late 2019, the Berlin Housing Association further remunicipalised 6,000 apartments in the Spandau and Reinickendorf districts41. This approach makes sense when one considers Vienna, one of the cities which tops the world ranking for quality of living, and where 62 percent of the city’s residents live in publicly owned or subsidised housing. Surprisingly, these residents are not just the lowest income earners, as housing in Vienna is considered a social good, not a market commodity42, and the city’s overall share of social housing (46 percent) is among the highest in the EU43.

At a European level, a European civil society coalition composed of tenants’ associations, human rights or-ganisations, trade unions, students, pensioners and city network representatives, launched the “Housing for All44” initiative in March 2019, demanding that the European Union take action to ensure affordable housing for everyone. Although halted by the organ-isers in February 2020 because of Brexit and before the one million signature goal had been reached, the initiative has triggered an EU parliamentary initiative on “access to decent and affordable housing for all”. The subsequent report drafted by the EU Committee on Employment and Social Affairs now calls on the EU Commission “to develop an integrated strategy for so-cial, public and affordable housing” and on Member States to increase sustainable public investment to ensure safe, quality, accessible and affordable housing for all in the EU45.

Cities are also uniting to return housing to its primary social role. In July 2019, eight cities46, together with United Cities and Local Government (UCLG), launched “Cities for Adequate Housing47”, a global call to national governments and global institutions for more regulato-ry and fiscal powers as well as resources for local gov-ernments to control and enhance their public housing stocks. This call is part of a series of actions in sup-port of “The Shift” campaign launched by the former UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing to reclaim housing as a fundamental human right48. As of today, 42 cities and metropolitan areas have endorsed “Cities for Adequate Housing49”.

Published in December 2019 by the former UN Special Rapporteur, the “Guidelines for the Implementation of the Right to Adequate Housing” contain a clear posi-tion on “preventing any privatization of public or social housing that would reduce the capacity of the state to ensure the right to adequate housing50”. As Covid-19 flares up again in Catalonia, the City of Barcelona has written to 14 corporate owners of 194 empty apart-ments urging them to find tenants within a month or the city will expropriate them, compensating the owners at half of the market price51.

As public authorities seek to provide lockdown and safety measures to beat Covid-19, and are forced to rethink and adapt their policies, public and social hous-ing clearly emerge as an essential part of the solution to beating pandemics and protecting public health. Market-based solutions have proved inadequate in effectively resolving the global housing crisis and up-holding the human right to housing, leaving deep social inequality and tearing apart social cohesion in many lo-cal communities as the most vulnerable pay the heav-iest toll.

It is imperative that the lessons learned from the pan-demic are integrated, made permanent and scaled up to ensure lasting, decent housing solutions for every-one. Public and social housing services have a funda-mental role to play in making this possible, and must be fully reclaimed and restored as a critical part of the toolkit governments at all levels have in order to secure social security and public health for all.

10 STRONG PUBLIC AND SOCIAL HOUSING SERVICES:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Daria Cibrario is Policy Officer at Public Services International (PSI), in charge of Local and Regional Governments and Multinational Enterprises. Prior to this role, Daria served as Political Secretary for the Food and Drink sector at the European Federation of Food, Tourism and Agriculture Trade Unions in Brussels and as International Officer for the Food and Drink sector at the International Union of Food Workers in Geneva. She holds a Master’s in Politics of the World Economy from the London School of Economics.

© Public Services International April 2020, revised and published August 2020

© Cover illustration Shutterstock collection

1. A. Standford, “Coronavirus: Half of humanity now on lockdown as 90 countries call for confinement” Euronews, 3 April 2020

2. UN General Assembly, “Guidelines for the Implementation of the Right to Adequate Housing”, Report of the Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, A/HRC/43/43, 26 December 2019

3. Fèvre, E. and Tacoli, C. “Coronavirus threat looms large for low-income cities” IIED 26 February 2020 and Tsai, J. and Wilson, M. “COVID-19: a potential public health problem for homeless populations” The Lancet, Vol 5 April 2020

4. UN, “‘Everyone at risk’ as coronavirus cases tick up among migrants and refugees sheltering in Greece” 2 April 2020

5. A. Anam, “COVID-19 fuels tensions between Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshi hosts”, The New Humanitarian, 27 July 2020

6. ILO, “World Social Protection Report 2017-19”, Geneva 2017

7. Sharma N., “Stigma: the other enemy India’s over-worked doctors face in the battle against COVID-19” 25 March 2020 and Nouvel Observateur, “«Merci d’aller vivre ailleurs » : des soignants considérés comme des pestiférés par leurs voisins” 25 March 2020

8. PSI, “Ten Points for Fair Cities and an Inclusive New Urban Agenda” 2016 and Pavanelli, R. “After the applause is time to rebuild global public services”, The Guardian 23 June 2020

9. Gertten, F. “The Push” documentary, Sweden 2019 official trailer

10. Ibid. 11. ACTU, “Nearly thirty thousand working full-time but

homeless” 25 July 2018 12. Art. 25, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, UN,

10 December 1948 13. SDG 11, Target 11.1 “By 2030, ensure access for all

to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services and upgrade slums”

14. UNECE, “The Geneva UN Charter on Sustainable Housing Ensure access to decent, adequate, af-fordable and healthy housing for all”, 16 April 2016

15. The New Urban Agenda, Habitat III, Quito, 2016 16. http://unhousingrapp.org/ 17. Reference to Saviano, R. in Wainwright. O., “Push

review – a whirlwind tour of rocketing rents and per-sonal tragedy” The Guardian, 10 September 2020

18. Van Heerden S., Ribeiro Barranco R., Lavalle C., “Who owns the city? Exploratory research activity on the financialisation of housing in EU cities”, European Commission, 2020

19. Farha. L. “Commodification over community: finan-cialization of the housing sector and its threat to

11A KEY ASSET IN HALTING GLOBAL PANDEMICS

SDG 11 and the right to housing” SDG 11, Spotlight on Sustainable Development 2017

20. National Law Centre on Homelessness and Poverty, “No Safe Place. The Criminalization of Homelessness in U.S. Cities” USA 2019 and Kovácz, V. “The war on rough sleeping. On the Criminalisation of homeless-ness in Hungary” Eurozine, 12 November 2019

21. Van Sparrentak K. (Rapporteur), Draft Report on “Access to decent and affordable housing for all” (2019/2187(INI)) EU Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, 27 July 2020

22. Farha, L., “When governments sell out to devel-opers, housing is no longer a human right” The Guardian, 29 February 2020 and Caballero, F. “La venta de 1.860 viviendas sociales a fondos buitre que condenó al Gobierno de Ana Botella” El Diario 29 December 2018

23. Taub, A. “A New COVID-19 Crisis: Domestic Abuse Rises Worldwide” NYT 14 April 2020

24. UCLG, “LLE Housing: ensuring everyone can safely #StayAtHome Briefing & Learning Note” April 1st, 2020 and UCLG-Metropolis “Cities for Global Health” database.

25. A 2019 UNISON report exposed the harsh conditions of social, elderly and community care workers in the UK. “Sleeping in, losing out: a survey of care staff on sleep-in shifts” UK 2019

26. UNISON website, “The government’s new housing proposals are ‘flawed’, says UNISON”, 13 March 2020

27. UNISON, “Housing Manifesto. Safe, Decent and Affordable Homes for All: UNISON’s Vision for Housing” January 2020

28. Homes for All web page https://homesforall.org/29. With the contribution of Sylvia Jones, UNISON’s

Assistant Policy Officer, 1 May 2020.30. Prentis, D, “Grenfell must not be allowed to be

another example of justice denied” UNISON, 12 June 2020

31. Booth, R. “Grenfell survivors and bereaved still fighting frustrating battles” The Guardian, 16 January 2020

32. ABC News, “More than 200,000 on public housing waiting list”, 27 January 2009

33. Mairs, J. « Unions ban construction workers from de-molishing Sydney’s brutalist Sirius building” DeZeen, 21 September 2016

34. Knaus, C. “Last resident at Sydney’s Sirius given fond farewell” The Guardian 27 January 2018

35. Cloris, J. « Grand froid : près de 200 000 sans abri en France » Le Parisien 1 February 2019

36. République Française, Ministère de la Cohésion des territoires et des Relations avec les collectivités ter-ritoriales, « Loi n° 2018-1021 du 23 novembre 2018

portant évolution du logement, de l’aménagement et du numérique »

37. CGT Fonction Publique Magazine n. 271 Octobre 2018 and author’s interview with Francis Combrouze, Fédération nationale CGT Services Publics, Equipement-environnement, 6 April 2020.

38. CUPE, « Municipalities and affordable housing » 27 May 2019  

39. CUPE “Housing is a human right” 1 June 2018 40. Stoyanov, A. “Berlin continues fight for affordable

housing “ 5 October 2019 41. The Future is Public Conference Report, “Towards

democratic ownership of public services”, Working draft Amsterdam, December 2019

42. Lorin V., « Can Vienna’s model of social housing provide the inspiration to tackle Europe’s housing crisis?” Equal Times 22 January 2020

43. Housing Europe, “Highlights: The state of housing in the EU”, 2019

44. Housing for All website 45. Van Sparrentak K. (Rapporteur), Draft Report on

“Access to decent and affordable housing for all” (2019/2187(INI)) EU Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, 27 July 2020

46. Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, London, Montevideo, Montreal, New York, Paris

47. “Cities for Adequate Housing, Municipalist Declaration of Local Governments for the Right to Housing and the Right to the City”, New York, 16th July 2018

48. UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing, “The Shift” website

49. Amsterdam, Asunción, Bangangté, Barcelona, Barcelona Provincial Council, Beitunia, Berlin, Birmingham, Blantyre, Bologna, Buenos Aires, Cascais, Copenhagen, Durban, Eyyübiye, Geneva, Jakarta, Lisbon, London, Mannheim, Mexico City, Medellin, Montreal, Montevideo, New Taipei, New York, Paris, Rennes, Río Grande, San Antonio de Areco, Seoul, Strasbourg, Taipei, Terrassa, Tlajomulco, Vienna, Zaragoza, Barcelona Metropolitan Area, Greater Manchester, Plaine Commune, Grand Paris. https://citiesforhousing.org/cities/

50. Art. 69 (i), UN General Assembly, A/HRC/43/43 “Guidelines for the Implementation of the Right to Adequate Housing” 26 December 2019

51. Sust, T., “Barcelona amenaza con expropiar 194 pi-sos vacíos si no se ponen en alquiler”, El Periodico, 13 July 2020

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Public Services International is a Global Union Federation of more than 700 trade unions representing 30 million workers in 154 countries. We bring their voices to the UN, ILO, WHO and other regional and global organisations. We defend trade union and workers’ rights and fight for universal access to quality public services.