Dialogue 5 - The Social and Economic Power of Housing (WUF13)

Hello, everybody.
Good morning.
Thank you very much for being here.
Thank you very much for participating in this very important dialogue on the social and economic power of housing.
Two drivers central for the analysis of the social housing.
I am Ana Fu, and I'm very grateful to be here trying to moderate this enormous and very interesting panel.
Before we begin, many of you will be participating in this Slido.
I just learned what is Slido.
Slido is a timeter, please take your phones and participate in this very simple but central question and what means home for you? Because this is what we are going to debate today and if we follow what the screen is giving us as return from this participation of the public, which is very welcome.
Home is safe, is safety, is a sanctuary, is a strong, is happiness.
To be honest, I think home is all that and much more.
This reminds us that home is not only the house, but is all is linked to that space where the reproduction of life is taking place.
And housing shapes in how we live.
Yeah, it's safety mainly, but it's peace and it's comfort and it's opportunity and it's family building because we need the home to build families.
But yet despite this shared understanding of what is home and what means home, we continue to face globally a housing crisis is across all regions of the world, expressing it in the most different ways and across generation is not only the elderly, but the young people, the young families, women, women who families and the challenge we are facing in this dialogue, but in the political action, in the proposals we are building every day is not simple.
It's not a simple one.
But we have to ensure that housing system can deliver and can deliver social outcome, but also economic value at the same time.
Over the next 2 hours in this dialogue, we are going to explore these central questions.
How can housing function simultaneously as a driver of economy economic development and as a foundation for inclusion, for dignity, for safety, for opportunities, and while we are still struggling to achieve this balance, we encourage all of you to continue participating, and here you have another set of questions.
This set of questions will prepare us for our panel.
I have the enormous pleasure to invite for this to open this first segment of this dialogue and to invite the persons that are here, the experts, the politicians that will participate as panelists.
So I'm going to call to the stage, Mr.
Eve Lauren Sapoval please join us, and I will be introducing each one of them while inviting them to the Mr.
Yves Lorenzapoval is advisor to the Director General for Planning, Housing and Nature, Head of French Delegation of the Ministry for Ecological Transition.
Thank you very much for being with us.
Please join us.
Mr.
Bahib Hashb.
I don't know if I pronounce it correctly.
Probably not.
Excuse me in my very bad pronunciation, but very welcome.
Mr.
Bahib is the special representative of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan in the Harajil, Gubai and Sangirn districts, and he's part of the office of the President of the Republic.
Thank you for joining us.
I will invite now His Excellency, the Ambassador Habri Ibrahim.
The Ambassador Habri Ibrahim Abdulleh is the ambassador of the Federal Republic of Somalia in Kenya.
Thank you very much for being with us.
Well, this is an enormous pleasure to invite misses Rose Moloua.
Rose, please join us.
Rose is a housing and community advocator.
She is a leader of the Mungano vi, Slum Dwellers International.
Rose, very welcome with us.
Thank you.
Then we have Mr.
Santos Kumar Runta.
He's the President of the World Blind Union.
Please, Mr.
Santos Kumar, he is the General Secretary of the National Federation of the Blind.
It is proud to have you with us.
Misses Francine Pickp, please, Francine, join us.
Misses Francine Pickp is the Deputy Director of the Bureau for Policy and Program Support of the United Nations Development Program.
Thank you for joining us.
And last but not least, Professor João Steve Taker Ferreira.
Professor Vitaer Ferreira is the Dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning and Design of the University of Sao Paolo in Brazil.
Well, what a group.
What an expert group and a professional and politicians group.
Thank you, all of you for being here.
I think we are going to speak in English and in Spanish, so make sure you have your phones so we can follow all the dialogue.
Thank you again to all of our panelists for joining us, and we are going to start our first round of discussion.
And I would like to invite to briefly because we have the see the responses on the screen, and the responses that were given in should housing primarily be about social inclusion or prosperity and economic growth.
And the responses are well, quite decisive.
Close to 60%, 56% saying that social inclusion and equalization and 41 prosperity and economic growth.
So I will ask you I mean, what this policy of revealing us because it's revealing an important reality, when the social inclusion and equity are the most voted by the people.
Yeah, I would like to invite you to make a very short, very brief reflection on this response, and I And then I will ask you I will follow in each one of your intertions with a question addressed to each one of you accordingly your experiences.
So let me begin with Mr.
Eve Lawrenz Sapoval Is being you a person that is living and working and thinking within Europe.
Could you please bring us some insights in how you see these poll results in first moment.
But then the housing systems that are increasingly under pressure from the rising coast, from the climate imperative, for the demographic shift.
And from the French national embroidery of European context, do housing policies today prioritize the economic or the social functions of housing? What is your reflection, and if you could elaborate a bit on your perspective or give us some concrete example.
The floor is olive.
Okay, how short do you want me to be here? You have 3 minutes.
Great.
I thank you for the question very short.
Thank you for the question.
Yeah.
You have 3 minutes.
Please interrupt me.
I'll be very short and brief with the question.
I do not see these as conflictual or different causes.
I think it's very much the same.
The question of economic and social question are very much linked in many ways.
First, I will use a part of my 3 minutes to acknowledge and to thank you for the invitation.
And for raising this question, which is obviously an important question, a great question.
I want to thank you UN Habitat for the thematic of this global forum because we've been advocating since years for this question of housing being at the center of international priorities, and I think we are reaching not exactly, but we are all trying to reach this point.
Regarding the priorities of the questions that you have raised, We need to bear in mind that, that housing is in the meantime an economic and social question in a way that, for example, our global wealth is housing mainly.
Real estate is more than 50% of the global wealth.
Within that, we can assume that about 60 to 70% of the real estate is housing, meaning that this is very much what we own.
When in my case, I'm a very lucky person, I only have a home.
Well, I have a motorcycle, but this is the only rich, the only wealth I have.
So it's a very important thing.
I would say to be very brief, first, we need to preserve what is existing and to adapt it to climate change because housing and globally real estate is massively exposed to climate change.
Many people will have to change home to adapt their homes not only to climate change, but also to demographic question like aging people and et cetera.
This is one of the main question we have in Europe.
Second thing is And this is not for France specifically.
Second thing is we need to continue developing housing and specifically social housing, not only for workers who need to find homes and to be able to change place to go from one place to another to work better, but also for students, which is a major question in our countries.
Okay? And the third thing, but we'll come back to that is do not aggravate what is existing when you build new houses.
And this is a major question in the world that do not aggravate the situation.
And for all that, we need innovation.
We need a lot of innovation.
Thank you very much.
Very interesting.
You bring youth, elderly, and innovation.
The critical issues to rethink this process, and of course, to think housing as an economic asset, but also as a social need.
So let me now turn to Mr.
Bahid.
Mr.
Vahid, what do you think about the results of the poll? But also, I would like to ask you How do you see in post conflict pardon me, I put this.
How do you see in post conflict and reconstruction context? This is a very misidious situation we are living today in the global world.
How do you see housing? Because housing often plays a central role not only in rebuilding communities, but also in supporting local economies, the local economy of recovery, and the long term resiliency.
From your experience, Do housing policies in this context need to prioritize the economic or should prioritize the social functions of housing? How do you see that? What could you elaborate on this? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Anna.
I also would like to thank you and panelists to invite me to this dialogue and to participate in this such interesting topic.
I will share my experience from restoration and reconstruction perspective because I'm responsible for special representative for Mr.
President for the liberated territories that was destroyed during the year of occupation, during the 30 years of occupation.
Whatever we do, we actually do everything from scratch.
That allows us to do things proper.
So in our view, the housing policy should not separate those two functions probably because we do everything from scratch, and that's the reason that we believe that the social factor and economic activities are deeply interconnected.
So housing is not only the social right and it's not a physical only the physical shelter.
But we believe that it is also a driver of economic activity.
It's absolutely impossible actually to make a sustainable growth without social inclusion.
But at the same time, we believe that it's absolutely impossible to make successful resettlement without an economic opportunities.
That's what we believe.
I will elaborate with the experience that we have here.
In the post conflict environment, the housing providing the housing often becomes the first visible sign of return and the foundation of rebuilding public trust.
So as I said, considering that we do everything from scratch, we are building cities and villages, smart villages and villages and cities, and it should incorporate both elements, both social and economic development.
By meaning that, for example, we've built villages in front of the road, main roads, and that basically gives us an economic opportunity.
But at the same time, while building that village, we also put quite a lot of attention to providing education facilities on that village, as well as the healthcare facilities, access to the public services, and everything which is related to that.
Also, what we have done, we use the climate as much as possible.
We're incorporating the solar panels on the roofs and that's basically decrease the bills of the citizens that are going to live in those areas.
At the same time, we're building a special cycling roads in the villages so that people can access the school and kindergarten quite fast.
And however, we believe that without economic economic development, it will be very impossible to provide a sustainable resettlement in that village.
And that's why the government is also quite keen to provide economic incentives, creating free economic zones around those cities and villages, so that's also provided job opportunities.
So all in all, we believe those two functions are very deeply interconnected, and without those two, it will be quite difficult to provide a sustainable settlement.
Thank you very much because you brought something that is, I think is central.
You are talking about settlements, cities.
You are talking not only about housing.
That interrelation, that is impossible to separate from housing and services and infrastructure and the linkage of that with the economic and of course, the social inclusion particularly in the reconstruction context.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Bahid.
Now I will move to Rose Malkwane Rose, you are an activist.
You are a deeply committed woman to the communities and the perspective of the communities.
I will say that most of the world houses and settlements were built by the social production of habitat.
So much of that warehousing, particularly in the extended low income context is produced by households and communities and from your experience working with informal settlements globally.
What do you think communities primarily prioritize? The social needs or the economic results of those processes? Under which circumstances one of those vectors become more urgent than the other? Please, the floor is yours.
And particularly Rose, I would like you to put an emphasis on the female headed households.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Anna.
Women, well organized men, that's the definition of women, and that's how I can answer you.
Then when we talk about housing, I think for me, when I look at it, I look at it in two different ways.
Formal housing and informal housing.
When we talk about formal housing, we talk about the social housing that is relevant for the privileged and those who can afford.
For the informal housing is for the people who knows that housing is very important for the protection of their family.
When we look at our world today, many countries are taking housing as a privilege and not as a right.
And then poor people don't have money to build big and beautiful houses.
That is why we always resort to informal settlements.
So when we talk about social housing, we talk about cohesion of the communities.
And then as the organization being part of shake dwellers international, we are practicing the cohesiveness of the communities who are coming together fighting for the rights to lend, fighting for the rights to housing, but not in a negative way, creating partnership that wants the voices of the poor to be listened to.
We are struggling to make meet ends meet because the partnership that we are advocating for, especially towards housing is very difficult to achieve on the side of SDI.
We are very happy today that this World Urban Forum is talking about housing to the world.
It says, Baku for action, action, whatever that English that B is talking about.
But what I want to emphasize is that when we are given the chance to own a piece of land, when we are given a chance to build our houses, then we promote what we call people's housing process and we really want the member state to understand why we are here today.
We want the partnership that is implementable when it comes to housing delivery.
We are having the challenges of the policies that government are coming up with in relation to housing because those policies are so beautiful.
They are like a lady who needs to be married, but there's no one who propose love to that person.
They are like sugar, but you can't leak it.
But what we want to see, we want to see the policies around housing that meets the needs of the poor themselves.
When we work together, we can achieve the economy that we think will be relevant and good for the poor, especially SDI.
I've got my colleagues here.
They can bear witness to me.
We are always crying.
We are always advocating.
We are always lobbying for the relationship.
But can we join hands together today and sing one song? Back on action? Action, action, action is very important.
If we act together, housing will be very important to everyone.
Social housing will bring us together.
Economy will be created during the process of housing delivery.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Rose, very much.
I think your reflection is give us the strength of what is the joint, the participatory forces of the community.
Let me bring this.
I just was in Uruguay before coming to Baku and I was with the cooperatives, the housing cooperatives.
And amazing because there was a project, enormous project called Mu Jefa, Mu Jefa because women chief in Spanish.
And that was in the year 90, led by Charna Furman, an architect of the Women and Habitat Network of Latin America.
And let me tell you something.
One of the women that was living in that cooperative, she was homeless and she said, I couldn't study because I had a house, and my son is a lawyer because I had a house.
And I think these are the type of responses that you are advocating us to think that the house is much more than a house.
As our dear gradsa from Brazil, from the women's movement says, a house is the door to other rights.
The right to a house is the door to other rights.
There is Grasa.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you, Rose.
I think your role as the role of all the activists is essential to really advocate for the right policies and where the needs are strictly that.
Now, let me move to Your Excellency, Ambassador Jarlibahim Abdullah.
Your Excellency, after this audience participation and the responses we got, and you coming you from Somalia where housing challenges are closely linked to displacement, people displacement, that suffering, tremendous suffering of people, informality, institution fragility and broader development pressures, What do you think government should prioritize to make housing more accessible to those lower income household, not only houses as Bahid was saying, but also services, land security, housing support infrastructure? What do you think about this challenging package.
Well, good morning and let me join my other colleagues to thank you and thank you for government Azerbaijan for hosting this important W 13.
But let me begin by first saying that the housing the joice of social inclusion and development cannot be separated.
They are interconnected.
You cannot say housing is a one side inclusion.
But I think before I answer your question, I would like to bring another additional angle to this discussion and that has to do with the culture itself because homelessness and lack of housing has a serious stigma in many cultures, including the one I come from, and effect and has a multiplier effect in other sector of your life.
If you don't have a houses.
I'll give you an example.
I hate to use this analogy, but nevertheless, you allow me to do it because I come from a culture of American we use poetry.
An analogies as well.
We say often that when an arrow hits your eye, and there's one hits you at the butt to say this.
I think the first you have to do is that in our culture, we said that first you remove the one of the butt, you can sit down and think how to deal with eyes as well.
So what I'm getting here is that housing is a fundamental importance, and you cannot move and do other thing in life without having a place to go home.
That is why we have to really look the interlink of the two.
Now, going back to the issue of uniqueness of Somalia, I think my colleague from Azerbaijan touched very well that conflict in leave is a legacy of displacement, trauma, and sometimes absence of a very strong institutions to deal with the effect of the Civil War.
Therefore, we have to look this point of view of how you deal policies, integrated policies that take into account the historical and the challenge that present the Civil War or the effect of what we call a prolonged challenges that our country has faced.
What we have done in our case, that the two elements that play very important for us.
One is that Somali peace in the sector, private sector come to the picture and play a role in the absence of state structure, so that housing being built and supported by private sector.
The other group that has been very helpful is also soma diaspora that has also come and contributed housing sector because the state is fragile, having some challenges, economic challenges and others.
So therefore, other parts are coming to play a role and the private sector and diaspora has been an important element into this discussion for us and they play a role.
So what we have to look is the the policy level on one side that has to be developed.
The land and particularly maybe other cultures may have the same problem that we have a culture where communists were running the country period of 30 years, 25, 21 years and people used to have the land belonged to the state.
So suddenly that become available.
Managing the land, providing a regulatory framework, creating accessibility of land is a very fundamental and that challenge is still we're dealing with that.
But nevertheless, government has played a role of facilitating land access, regulatory framework put in place and addressing of displacement.
We are now instead of focusing on low income people, which rightfully need some support, our major focus started with dealing with the people are displaced of thousands of them and providing space.
We have now city of Vaa, other area of the country where thousands of houses have been built to address that immediately and then move to the next level with the support of private sector.
Thank you very much, Ambassador.
Thank you for bringing an applause.
Thank you for bringing here the private sector because, of course, all the actors are needed, and we know that.
Thank you very much for your reflection.
Now I'm going to turn to Mr.
Santos Kumar Runta and Let me bring you into this conversation, Mr.
Santos.
As you know, housing and urban development are often framed as engines of economic growth, as we just heard also.
But yet many groups remain systematically excluded from benefiting from that growth.
From your perspective, do housing policies, housing laws, standards globally today.
Include the economic or the social function of housing.
Have you seen meaningful progress in integrating groups that are discriminated, I would say, over time? Please, the floor is yours.
Thank you very much.
Before I answer your question, I would like to bring a very different perspective to discussion.
When we talk of housing from the perspective of persons with disability, which I am myself, It's not a building.
We consider housing home, a building which is accessible.
You just create a building which is inaccessible, you don't provide for a ramp, you don't provide for a tactile, you don't interconnect the vicinity where I have a home.
With the accessible transport systems, you create public facilities, digitalized facilities unmindful of the access requirements of different categories of persons with disabilities, it is not housing for us.
Now, to answer your question, I would say that from my perspective and from the perspective of persons with disabilities, housing policies across the world have functions have viewed the function of housing as economic growth function rather than its social function.
We forget that when economies are at stress, it is the welfare schemes which enable or which enhances the purchasing capacity to arrest the economic downturn.
Therefore, housing should be viewed as a social function primarily, which will enrich the economic growth as well.
Housing is often treated as a market community.
A real estate investment, an infrastructure project rather than as a fundamental human right linked to dignity, independence, inclusion, and participation in society.
As a result of these gaps, millions of persons with disabilities continue to face inaccessible and homelessness and exclusion from community life.
But this is not the only negative side.
We have made some positive progress.
I would like to highlight some of them.
We are also witnessing the positive progress in some countries due to the influence of UN Convention on disability rights.
Especially Article 19 on independent living and community inclusion, and Article 9 on accessibility.
For example, several countries have introduced universal design principles in building regulations.
In India, under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, We have included various provisions for accessibility, which are mandatory though in nature, but this is all relating to public buildings and public infrastructure, not private housing.
In some European countries, social housing projects now incorporate theft free access, tactile features, accessible transport, connectivity, and community based support systems.
A very important lesson from these experiences is that accessibility cannot be an afterthought.
If housing is designed inclusively from the beginning, it benefits not only persons with disabilities, but also older persons, women, children, and other marginalized communities.
Therefore, housing policies must move from a charity based norm and perspective to the right based approach.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Santos for this reflection you brought us on housing as a right, but the inclusion of the sign in how we think houses, and the inclusion of the universal design, which was a work done for decades to achieve that consensus, and that's not only the house, but again, is the transport, is the public spaces, is the settlements as a whole that should not omit anyone.
Not omit anyone, not only the people with certain handicaps, but also women and children.
Thank you very much.
Well, now we are going to Going back to the results, I would call misses Francine pickup.
Yeah.
And Francine, as you know, housing is deeply connected to poverty reduction, what is one of the main objectives of UNDP, and also is connected to life, to resilience, to development itself, you know? But I housing is usually treated as one sector, a sector that stands alone and not link to all these other dimensions.
From this perspective of development and these frameworks, and How do you approach to these issues and put into balance economic and social inclusion? Thank you very much.
The floor is yours.
Thank you.
It's really a pleasure to be part of this panel with my colleagues here.
I think you're absolutely right.
Traditionally, housing is viewed as an economic asset, as a supply issue, whether it's commercially viable or not.
What that means is that investments tend to have only flowed towards high income housing options.
As a result, what we see is that displaced communities, smaller towns, informal settlements, these are all left behind.
And actually, as other panelists have been saying, we need to look at housing not just as an economic asset, we need to look at it in terms of its social function and the social functions are very clear.
As has been said so nicely, housing provides access to all sorts of opportunities to health, to jobs, to services, and housing also builds social cohesion and builds trust in your neighborhood, in your community, but also in local institutions.
I think about an example from Colombia, a country that's been through decades of conflict where UNDP through this trust fund was able to work with 170 municipalities.
We weren't just working on housing as a as a delivery issue, the housing was building participatory planning.
It was building trust again between communities and between people and local authorities.
It's about access, it's about trust and social cohesion, but it's also about building resilience to crisis.
You know, no one is immune from crisis and shocks anymore, whether it's climate, whether it's displacement, whether it's economic shocks.
The way housing is done really shapes a town or city's ability to be resilient and people's ability to be resilient to that crisis.
So we don't see and it's really and I think other colleagues have said housing isn't a standalone issue, it's a sustainable development issue.
And for that, we need to look at it in an integrated way and see how housing links to a whole bunch of other issues.
It's a governance issue.
It's a finance issue.
We have colleagues from a delegation in Morocco and in Marrakesh, for example, we really see housing as part of a greening the city initiative where we invest in low carbon strategies, where we invest in mobility, where we invest in access.
Through that initiative with the global environment facility, the government has actually come in.
We've been able to leverage that donor money to bring in other sources of financing, whether it be from the private sector or from the government in this case.
Housing is very much a governance issue, a finance issue, a gender issue.
As we said, we see some of the best initiatives in transforming housing and the lives in people's communities when they're led by women.
I think a meter is interesting because it said social.
People thought predominantly it's a social issue.
What I would like to see is for investors, banks to see it as an investment too, but not only in that high income way of looking at it, but to invest in sustainable housing and to bring that investment and that private sector money sustainable housing, not just the top layer of it.
Thank you very much, Francine.
I think it's very interesting the reflection you are bringing us and how you put the housing as the provider of other accesses, what we just were talking before.
I mean, job security.
But also, I appreciate very much how you brought the local institutions into your reflection and the importance of the local institution and the local dimension to build this resistance as you call, yeah.
And resilience in the communities that are issues of governance and issues of finance, but also of policies that will invest in this line.
Thank you very much.
I think we're having really around those very interesting reflections.
Finally, I would like to invite my colleague, my Latin American colleague coming from Brazil, Professor as Vito Ferreira, and Professor os will speak in Spanish for my joy.
I'm going to turn into Spanish.
Professor a Vito Ferreira, olladarte la Pava, Gtariaoo in Brazil, reflexion Academy Ambianonom to socio economic development of markets in the case of Brazil.
What experiences could you share with us and perhaps some examples.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Please forgive me for speaking in Spanish.
I find it easier than speaking in English.
Thank you so much for the invitation from UN Habitat, and it's an honor to be here at this panel.
I would like to say that the housing policy, if we understand it as a policy, it's a public policy.
So before anything, before we talk about the economic aspect, the policy is to guarantee a home, as a roof, as protection, as something essential to life and because it's It's because it's so essential that we have people trying to make sure that this home is not precarious.
That's why we have so many so much precurian housing.
It gives right to work, to education, to health.
The most important thing is the right to a decent old age.
Quite often when we have the economic question as a priority, we have some confused ideas.
For example, in the 70s, the National Bank of Housing produced 4 million housing units.
But it was really a priority for the construction companies.
They they managed to find housing for middle class families, but not for the poorest.
The housing deficit grew during that time.
In the 2000, they sent 1.8 million houses almost without cost to the poorest population.
That prioritized housing as a public investment and of course, it has a structure and economic architecture, a structure.
We have to understand that as a public investment.
I think another important point is to think that the housing policy cannot, when we think about it as an economic thing, we can't always think of it as always producing new housing.
I'll give you the example of Brazil to say that more than 60% of the housing deficit is for the excessive burden for families that already live somewhere and have more than 30% of their income which is spent on housing.
It's not a question of income, it's an economic question.
We have to think that the housing policy is not always a question of building new housing.
It's important for the production industry, but it's also a matter of transforming from now for the future priority policies for huge territories of informal housing in cities, for improvements of housing, for urban improvements and investment in the cities and in these districts because it's not just a matter of housing questions, but we're also breaking with the social exclusion, which is one of the most serious problems that we have in our cities, at least in the context of Brazil and I'm certain in the Global South.
That is what I wanted to say for now.
Thank you.
And so that's very important what you have just said because what the Professor Josie Witkel two or three different issues.
One is where the social housing was produced and for whom is it? Because social housing has not arrived or has not reached the sectors that it was aimed at.
And then what is the state policy? We can reach they can reach the poorest sectors.
But now we have an additional reflection, which I think is very important for the world, not just for Latin America, and that is the different types of operations for housing, not just housing that is owned privately, but also rented housing that can regulated and how it can be regulated are the types, for example, co housing, thinking creatively in different ways for resolving this problem.
Thirdly, And what I think is very important is for urban improvements, what can we do in these informal settlements? Which affects everybody.
How can we provide them with urbanization? How can we turn them into cities? Thank you so much.
Panel we had.
We've been running out of time.
So I don't think we will have time for a second round of questions.
But I would like very much, there is another timeter there.
That is, what would you like to add to your home? You have it in front in your screen and how can we solve the challenge of increasing the unit cost of housing and how can cities keep housing affordable without this coulda in private sector? Well, Very complex three questions because I'm only going to give 1 minute to each panelist give another round of thoughts that you would like to add maybe around some of this question because we wanted the public to participate and this is very important to hear what the public in here is thinking and their worries around this issue.
I think I'm going to go ahead and we'll give 1 minute to each other so we can close this panel with the last reflection.
Maybe we can go on the contrary and I will ask then to Professor Tatar Primo.
I'm going to ask you first, Professor.
Draset if he would like to add a 1 minute reflection, which is related to this question.
Yes, thank you.
I think on the second question, I think that there is an important question and the public housing policies, there is a political and economic equation that has to be followed by everybody, and it's a matter of what we have to make a lot or do a lot.
And do it quickly and at low cost.
This question is a question that is understood from a political and economic point of view.
We can do a lot for a lot of people and quickly, well, we can do it more quickly, but there are results and consequences which are very problematic related to the quality and related to the fact that low cost is linked to the management of land and if you do things very quickly, and in great quantities and at low cost, but very far away and actually, they will be much more expensive afterwards, or they will have a much higher cost later to be able to reach closer.
These are very important things that we have to know and understand in order to be able to comprehend what are these public policies and market policies on cost.
And input, then maybe we can move to Francine Francine, last reflection.
Yeah, I think the questions gone.
Yes.
The top question, how can cities keep housing affordable without discouraging private sector investment and construction? I think what I would say is going back to my previous point on the importance of not seeing housing as a standalone sector, we need to see housing as a governance issue.
Housing becomes a good investment when there are good secure tenure rights, when there is strong local planning capacity.
And then it becomes a more attractive investment, I would say.
Then we also need to look at financing.
It can't be seen as just state or private financing of social housing of housing for low income neighborhoods.
It's really important to look at how we can combine public and private sources of financing to de risk and bring in more financing.
Then I would say it's really important to design with resilience in mind.
So to look at construction and the design of communities so that resilience to shocks is there from the outset.
Then you're looking at investing in the future and investing in long term.
I think that makes it much more attractive perspective.
Thank you, Francine.
Very interesting your reflection also.
Now let me move to Santos.
Thank you very much.
I think through public and private partnership, we can reduce the costs and make housing more effortable And in terms of policies and development of housing projects and other facilities, we could think of some mandatory policy provisions for the investors in the construction area, a field To provide a certain percentage of their earnings into affordable housing.
And also government could support through some incentive concessional schemes for enabling the marginalized groups to purchase the houses.
And I would like to conclude my reflection by saying, that in any effort for reducing the cost and to make housing affordable, we should not compromise the principle of accessibility of diverse disability groups and other segments.
And in so doing, if required, government should invest money from its own project as integral part of policy and project development.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Santos.
And let me move to Your Excellency, Ambassador Sabril Iwahi Abdullah.
Well, thank you very much.
I think three reflection I will leave.
One has to do with it may be easy to build houses, but without having infrastructure to support the communities of these houses, the house has no value.
In other words, you need to have, if you build houses about 20 kilometers outside town and people cannot get jobs, those houses might have no value, it might create a problem.
That's one issue that we need to also think about integrated infrastructure that support these communities.
Number two is the issue of financing.
The biggest problem that many people are facing is that accessibility, even if you build, you cannot have a free housing, everybody can come in.
People might pay a very small fee getting support of these individuals of accessibility, particularly in the South, for example, where mortgages are extremely high, it would be very difficult people to own a houses.
It's going to take forever for them to get it.
The third one I would like to leave is the issue of displaced people.
These people who suffered, traumatized over the years, I think they need a unique way of addressing their concern.
They might not because they need a durable solution to live where they are.
Those are the three items I will leave.
Again, thank you very much for inviting us.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for this.
Now listen to Rose, Moloua and your last reflection, Rose.
Thank you very much, Anna, again.
I think the institutional arrangement is very important.
When we talk about people's public and whatever partnership, If it is institutionalized where we include organized communities to be part of the decision making in planning and delivering of houses.
I think it's very important and also the financial mechanism that will give access for communities who have tried themselves because like for instance, I will give an example of SDR we've got a lot of resources.
We just want to meet each other halfway with governments so that housing delivery can be easier.
And also to formalize the informal settlements by giving proper security of tenure to the informal settlers so that they can also use their own resources and take care of their own economic projects or programs.
I think those are the important things that I to highlight that information collection, I think that data that governments are using sometimes are not meeting the needs of the real vulnerable people.
If we work together and collect the aggregated data that is important to create the space for housing delivery, it will be very, very much important.
Finally, Anna, maybe I would like you to allow me to invite all of you today from 12:00 to 130.
We are celebrating our 30th anniversary of the existence of SDI that is driven by women.
You are all welcome to come and celebrate with us.
We enjoy it too much and especially the partnership with UN Habitat that we have done for almost over 20 years.
We'll be happy if Anna you can join.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Rose.
I will try to be there, of course, and congratulations for that celebration.
Thank you very much.
Well, now I will give the floor to Mr.
Bahi Thank you very much.
I will also try to be short.
I give my comment from the post conflict and reconstruction context.
We understand that how much time it takes to build one house or to repair the flat where we're living.
You can imagine how much time it takes to construct 1,000 of houses for the displaced people and at the same time to provide a proper healthcare system, provide educational facilities, roads, railways, and so on.
And that also takes time, but the people who are waiting for their return, they don't have time.
They want to make it as quicker as possible.
For that reason, the government needs to react quite quickly for that reason.
In that case, I believe what we do ourselves is to have an institutional framework that coordinates all activities that come together, which brings together all governmental bodies into one place and start analyzing the places where the cities and villages are going to be built.
That's exactly what we are doing and what we've done for the past few years.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Bahir.
Let me go to Mr.
Yves Lorraine Sapoval for your last reflection.
Yes.
Thank you.
Challenging though.
If you want to pass if we want to go from discussion to action, I think we want to go from talking to walking.
If we want to do things like that in housing, we have to assume that housing will never be only a private market question.
If we want social housing is going to be a public policy question.
For this, we need three things.
We need political will, we need money, and we need solutions.
So in terms of money, we have to bear in mind that despite the advocacy we're doing here, only less than 1% according to a habitat for humanity, less than 1% of the ODA is going to housing.
Okay.
And we also need to assess country by country, what part of the GDP is going to public policy on housing.
We would have many, many surprises if we were to assess this country by country, so please try to do this for your country.
What part of the GDP is really going to our housing? Second thing, policies and political will.
We need every country to have an inclusive public policy on housing and a policy that takes into account all the situations.
I'm talking about all the situations.
And third, solutions, of course, we need to share solutions.
This is what we're doing here.
I'm just advocating for rental housing.
How many of your countries have a real policy on rental housing, which is obviously a sector housing which is not addressed vastly not addressed in the world.
So so for the work that we are doing in human habitat, I just want to tell you that we have an open ended working group on housing that is taking place after the resolution 2.7 on adequate housing for all.
We're trying to advocate for that.
We have been securing the presidency with Kenya over the first year and Makdihi of Azerbaijan and Somalia are taking the lead for this year.
So there are things happening.
We still need advocacy, but we need to advocate first to be clear on the fact that this is not going to be solved only by the market and that the public sector has to get embedded into housing policies.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Well, really, we had an excellent reflex Enrique social inclusion and economic aspects.
So I would like to invite now our panelists and thank you very much to each one of you.
I will invite you to be together with us in participating in the audience because now we have the second segment of our morning.
Thank you very much and while you are leaving and please a big applause, enormous applause to all.
Oh yes, I want to p.
Janu Well, thank you again.
Thank you very much again to all the panelists.
We had an excellent panel and we could have hours discussing and taking back all the good ideas we receive and the good reflection.
And they give us very important insights and contributions.
And thank you as well to all the audience, this audience that was so participative and that gave their own point of views.
So thank you very much because this is what we want the participation throughout this discussion.
What we have heard over the last hour is that housing sits at the intersection of many competing priorities and responsibilities, and it is shaped not only by policy or planning, but also by finance, mainly by finance, I would say, governance, political leadership, community action, international cooperation.
And this brings us to the next segment of this session, housing as the crossroads, the crossroads of equity, growth, and global action.
And this is fireside conversation, we will move from technical pathways and implementation challenges to the broader political and institutional questions shaping housing outcomes globally today.
But before I will then I have my honor and my particularly pleasure to invite two leader women.
I want to invite Her Royal Highness Princess Lamia Bind Mayad Al Sad.
Please, princess.
Thank you.
Finish And I would like to invite to our executive Deputy, Anna Claudia Roshb the Under Secretary-General, and Executive Director of UN Habitat.
What a challenge for me to moderate these two fantastic women.
We are proud.
We are very proud to have these women in leading positions.
So a big applause for them.
We've been discussing on and having a fantastic panel this morning just before you came in, and we know that housing is a powerful engine that is contributing to growth, to local resilience, but it's also a need a tremendous need and that it really It stimulates domestic industries and can trigger prosperity for households.
And it's not only security, but it's also job opportunities.
It's also family.
And well, we've been discussing all these, and now let me finally come to Her Royal Highness Princess, Lamia bin Majeed Al Saod and Your Royal Highness housing is deeply linked to dignity.
To opportunity, to social stability, yet its broadther societal value is often underrepresented in public budgets and frequently left to market driver solutions alone.
From your perspective, what leadership mindset shift and what shift in the global narrative are most urgently needed to mobilize governments and the international actors to treat housing as a long term social investment rather than a series of disconnected interventions.
Please, Princess, the floor is yours.
First of all, good morning.
I'm very pleased to be here with Your Excellency.
Thank you very much for the opportunity.
First, let's reframe the meaning of housing or why it's needed.
I believe housing is a starting point, not the end result, not the goal.
At the end of the day, it's a starting point for people to feel safe, have a roof on top of their head.
Understand what's the meaning of safety, stability, dignity.
This is the meaning of housing at the end of the day.
But those people we have in the foundation, which is Elote philanthropies, we have been working in housing and providing suitable homes and shelters for people almost for 45 years.
We delivered 1.2 million units around the world.
We invested in humanity and human over $5 billion.
It's not about the unit itself.
It's about how we can, I would say, develop families, mother and fathers to not to be dependent and to be independent.
How we do that, we worked with you and habitat.
I'll give a very brief example which just happened.
We always look to the ROI.
Yes, it is the return on investment, but we take it from a human based measurement.
We worked with you and habitat and Sidrby in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
We actually provided 600 housing unit, but we didn't stop there.
We actually started there, and we developed programs for training that ends with jobs for Yemeni family.
Beneficiaries were almost 5,000 beneficiaries.
This is how it reflects on the community.
Than just handing a key for a house.
Because when we put in mind, Your Excellency, and this is upon your report, 60% of the population by 2030 will be expected to be living in cities.
Would you expect that government will be providing all of this? This is a completely budget, another global budget that we have to look into it.
I think when you train families and you train citizens around the world to earn their own money, to participate, whether to be able to rent or to buy a unit, I think this is the meaning of, I would say, dignity and stability.
Moreover, in the foundation, we have a formula.
We always work with it.
We have a trium, first of all, governments for policies and governance, and I would say sustainability for the project.
Second, international entities, which is the technical framework, and philanthropies, which provide innovation, vision, and of course, financial support.
I think those three must be in any project that include in it housing because at the end of the day, you're creating a full system, not only four or five walls, that you will give it to families.
Thank you, Excellence.
Thank you very much, Princess and well, just to listen to our executive secretary in a reflection around these issues, that is the central issue of this world urban forum.
Under your leadership.
Yeah, reflecting about your question.
First of all, I think it's an assumption that to deal with housing, you need the highest leadership in a country.
We discussed that largely very recently when we had the African Urban Forum, also focus on housing in Nairobi.
Because housing is at the intersection of so many different systems, right? So housing can be perceived from the social perspective dimension, but you have the environmental dimension, you have to be careful where you build and how you build.
But you also have the local dimension, dimension, how the urban plans and systems they work for housing, right? Uh, land is critical, for example.
So we need pious leadership, and if you don't have that, it's impossible to accomplish the goals.
The second thing that I wanted to say is that if we look at the past of the history, um, We major moments in our history where we have been societies have been able to lift large numbers of population out of poverty or recover from major conflicts or major crisis.
Housing has been the entry point.
I'll give a couple of examples.
Think about Europe after the war.
So housing was a key entry point for recovery.
So massive production of housing with the money that was public came from the Marshall Plan, was able to re lift the whole region.
But the first thought is people are unhoused.
We need to build houses.
And these houses were responsible also to start a whole engran of production of the value chain, the industry, right, was leveraged throughout this process.
Uh, if you think about China, China has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and housing has been an entry point through their urbanization process using housing.
If you look at the China's GDP and the historical growth of the GDP, housing has been a large, input for the GDP there.
Other example, the United States, after the crisis in the 30s, the whole housing finance system was established as a response to the crisis and as an entry point.
Even Brazil, after the crisis in 2008, the global financial crisis, housing was housing upgrading of informal settlements.
They have been strategies for recovering and so on.
We do have these examples.
They are very clear in my mind, on how development cannot go without housing and that housing can be the entry point for us to recover from crisis, economic crisis, and from conflicts.
I think now there is a growing understanding that is specifically for the regions that are mostly affected by the urbanization process.
Princess, you're right, we are expecting until 2050 to have 2 billion people come into cities.
And these 2 billion people they are concentrated in Southeast Asia and Africa, and we are talking about cities that are already lacking infrastructure.
In Africa, 50% of the population live in slums, informal settlements in average in cities, the urban population.
So it is critical to address that because how can we expect the industries to develop if people are not housed? You need a labor force to start with, and the labor force needs housing.
Then the other evidence to conclude this part of this conversation is that We actually have evidence that when we invested in upgrading informal settlements, integrating, improving conditions of people living in precarious situations, in housing, you promote local economic development.
Because you create jobs at the local level, you create business opportunities.
Think about women entrepreneur, the large amount of women entrepreneurs that produce things in their own houses, as an example.
You create an enabling environment for small business, small entrepreneurs, for economic development at the local level.
Housing speaks to the GDP big time and speaks also to the local communities and the households themselves to improve their incomes.
Well, thank you very much for these two reflections.
But then following these reflections and agreeing with you about these different scales in which we have to think the local scale because it is true that in poverty and even in the precarity, there is economical production and people is leaving.
People is defending their living, particularly women, I will say, yeah.
Absolutely, they are defending the families, the condition.
They have to feed the families, the kids.
So people living even in those precarious conditions, even in displacement, even in army conflict conditions.
These are the diagnosis, the reality we are recognizing and that is very important to recognize the problem.
But then, how do you see the different actors We come the different actors and how could come the local actor, the philanthropy, the multilateralism playing a role in the way we have to confront this huge challenge for humanity.
Princess, would you like to I can start this time.
Yeah, I think, of course, as I said yesterday in the opening and earlier on, the pieces are out there of the solutions.
We do have solutions already.
We have to know how we have evidence, we know what we have to do.
But sometimes you have to build the pieces together to what are the pieces that would work in a certain context, the model, the types of housing policies, how you engage with communities in different aspects and so on.
Also, because of the complexity of the ecosystem around housing, all the dimensions, ecological, social, urban dimension, economic dimension.
We are talking about that today.
We need to work in partnerships.
There's no way, right? And of course, the local level is critical, engaging the communities in the process, engaging the local leadership, the local authorities, everything.
Happens at some ground somewhere.
But if you look more holistically, where is normally the money located? The money is located and decided at national budgets.
You need to have, and you spoke about the global budget, princess before, we need to bring centrality of the centrality of housing in their budget decision.
Many countries did that.
They did that with courage because it requires courage and were able to increase significantly the budget for housing domestically.
Um, and I think there's no country that was able to deal with the housing structure without leveraging domestic finance.
But, um, and then you need the legislations.
You need to have policies, you need to have laws, right, that will support cities, for example, to plan for housing.
And what we can do as UN, as UN habitat, we can set up norms, support member states in setting up norms.
In that case to be very concrete, we are supporting the open ended working group on housing with member states with two clear outputs.
One is a setup of policy recommendations, how countries can address because the pieces are out there.
But if we have a consensus on how to address what kind of policies we need, and this is recommended by the United Nations, this might help us to accelerate the process and the building of the consensus at the local level.
Because let's agree that when you decide as a political leader, to put housing at the center, you face political barriers because housing takes time.
And first, some will be selected and some not because you don't have money for everybody, especially in the global South.
So we can do that.
The other thing is to bring us together like we are doing here right now and having these types of discussion.
So the global spaces for knowledge sharing, for advocacy they are critical to make the case out white housing is important for development.
Finally, we can be with you on the ground with the communities and so on, and especially thinking about our role you and Haptat have been thinking a lot about that and discussing internally as we have such a convening power we can convene the local authorities, the academia, the community leaders, the civil society.
I think this is a critical role because at the end of the day, everything is related to the governance, how we bring all these stakeholders together.
But we have money out there, we have money development funding, we have climate funding, and I believe we also have to work hard to make sure that all this global finance is more directed into housing.
There are some statistics that actually the share of housing within international development assistance, official developments.
This is very small, but we can expand that.
My only point is that we cannot rely only on that and we need to build the systems internally.
But the IFIs, they have a strong role also in working together with us, providing technical assistance and supporting innovation and also transferring knowledge horizontally.
Let me just add one thing about that.
So we actually worked literally we work in 190 countries around the world.
As I said, we delivered 1.2 million units around the world.
I believe it differs from one country to another.
It's all about data, the needs of the community.
We always pay respect to communities whenever we enter any a community around the world.
We understand the need, the type of housing, where it should be.
Even we create, I would say an ecosystem financial ecosystem around it.
For example, I will give you just two projects that really embody what I'm going to say.
First example, it was a French entity that we worked in.
In Africa, they created something called the Nubian housing, which a method of building that come from Egypt from NOBA and it's for the very hot weather places.
They actually use natural resources.
They train masons.
Actually, the outcome of this project is almost 400,000 beneficiaries, whether from creating jobs, training, working with natural resources, and we can consider it a green building as well.
It benefit everyone around it.
Other example which I'm very proud of, we work with the Ministry of municipalities and housing with second foundation.
We're very proud of what we did so far.
We provide 10,000 housing unit in ten years and 10,000 cars, why we're doing that.
Housing as Your Excellency said, it's the roof.
It's the hub for women, specifically women.
If they can use this as a base for their business, as security, and as well as cars.
His Royal Highness, Prince Louis Benalal this is, I would say motto in life.
To feel that you're a human, you have to have a roof on top of your head.
So he decided to remove the burden of rent and the burden of transportation.
So housing can be a certain type of a hub for a project and as well as cars.
Cars, we give and most of them are woman, by the way.
They're not only using it for transportation, as well as they're working extra hours with Uber.
So they're having their income not only providing out of the burden of, you know, the finance of transportation.
It's it's generating extra income, not only that, We decided that we have to equip the cars with patterns that you can drive it with hands for the special needs or the physical disabled people.
So we have almost 70 ladies, they're earning their monthly income from our project, which is with Uber and almost 80 men.
They're physically disabled.
It's all about this stability and you being able to be productive and it starts with the house.
Start for you to feel stable and feel your dignity is intact.
Yeah.
Thank you very much.
Well, thank you very much, Executive Director, princess.
I think you brought some reflections that are very relevant and I think that what we are hearing from you is the importance of working together.
I think that is the synthesis that will make.
How do we work together? Philanthropy, and local governments and local communities and thinking always that housing alone is not the solution.
As just princess told us this last experience, the importance of linking housing to services, to infrastructure, to production, housing is much more than the the house, is the possibility of.
I would like to pick up what the Executive Director, Anna Claudia Roche said, and she proposed something that I think is central for the discussion to set up, set up agendas, set up recommendations.
And this is a role for UN, of course, to use the blue flag of UN.
How do we recommend, how we work together, how we advocate, and how we put together into the dialogue, national governments, local authorities, academia, community leaders, women's, handicapped.
I mean, these huge complex actors in a more virtual relation.
Thank you very much.
I think it was a privilege to have you here and a privilege for the audience.
Thank you very much.
We know you have a very tight agenda, and so we are now going to make a picture because I want a picture with these two powerful women.
And then I would like to invite Mr.
Raftad to make a wrap up of this session.
The magation win.
Well, now.
Let's wait a moment.
They did they didn't they didn't.
Thank you.
Well, we are to close this session.
I think it was a very rich session in the first panel and in the second moment, and now we have the closing moment with the remarks and the wrap up that Rafael T, the director of the Global Solutions Division of UN Habitat will give to us, big applause for Raf.
Are you going to do? Yes.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I'm going to leave the floor.
Thank you, Anna.
Thanks for the excellent moderation throughout this dialogue number five.
This is very much appreciated.
My role is here to provide some closing remarks regarding this dialogue and just to try and sharpen the collective direction of how can we move forward from what has been discussed.
But before doing so, I'd like to thank all the panelists for their contributions and for the participants for being here and this and your questions.
So this dialogue has recognized, indeed the potential of housing as a socioeconomic driver, as a powerful economic engine, but also as potentially one of the most important social equalizers.
And when housing systems function well, they can drive growth while reducing inequality.
But when they do not function well, they become a source of exclusion, reinforcing disparities within our cities.
We know that housing contributes to 15 to 18% of global GDP, supporting lots of jobs and economic activity in construction, real estate, services, and finance.
But it also shapes life outcomes, health, well being, access to education and livelihoods.
So this is all well established through this dialogue.
Yet, there is a growing disconnect between this economic benefits and the social outcomes of housing, resulting in a pattern that is all too familiar growth without equality and equity.
Cities are expanding rapidly, and the benefits of this growth, housing, jobs, and services are not reaching lower income households, leaving them excluded from the socioeconomic development.
This gap is driven by three key challenges.
First of all, housing systems remain heavily market driven and oriented towards short term returns, creating tensions between economic performance and social outcomes.
We also lack diversity and flexibility with insufficient support for rental, incremental, and community led solutions, reflecting the realities of low income households.
Then also housing is still too often treated as a standalone sector rather than a system that links land, infrastructure, finance, services, and urban form, which leads to fragmentation that weakens both the delivery and the outcomes.
Finally, there is still a persistent gap between planning and implementation cities have sound plans, but they often lack the fiscal space, the regulatory frameworks, institutional capacity, and the project preparation mechanisms that are needed to translate this into bankable and viable investments.
So how can we transition to more inclusive housing solutions? First, we need to rebalance housing systems moving from purely market driven approaches towards more diverse and inclusive solutions.
This means scaling rental housing, supporting community led and cooperative models, and enabling incremental housing and innovative financing approaches that reflect the realities of low and middle income households.
Second, we must shift from fragmented interventions to integrated housing systems.
Housing cannot be treated in isolation.
It must be planned and delivered in connection with land, infrastructure services, and urban development, ensuring more efficient and equitable outcomes.
Finally, we need to strengthen public sector capacity to lead and implement at scale.
This requires stronger institutions, better regulatory frameworks and investment in project preparation so that cities can translate plans into these investments.
In this context also public finance plays a catalytic role, not just in the direct provision, but also in the de risking of investments and crowding in private capital towards affordable and inclusive housing.
But this requires collective action across government, cities, private sector, communities, and international partners working together to scale solutions.
Platforms like World Auban Forum play a critical role in fostering this exchange.
Ultimately, moving forward, the challenge before us is not to choose between housing as an economic engine or housing as an equalizer, but to intentionally design and govern housing systems so that they can achieve both.
So let's move forward in that direction with a shared commitment to making housing systems work better for all.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Rafael Tots, for closing this session.
Thank you so much to Anna Fallou for moderating and to every panelists who brought their perspective to this year's WUF.
Also, thank you to the ED and Her Majesty.
With that, we close the session.
Again, also a few applause to the audience who participated in every poll and all the questions that were submitted.
Thank you.