ONE UN - Delivering SDG 11 through Housing - Supporting National and Local Action in the UNECE Region (WUF13)

Good afternoon and thank you for joining us.
I think we wait just a few more minutes for participants who are still running between the different venues, so we give them two more minutes and then we start.
Thank you.
I think we start.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you for joining us here at the One UN event on delivering SDG 11 through housing, national frameworks, and multi level governments in the UNECE region.
My name is Mike Ss.
I work at the UNECE Cities Unit, the Regional Commission of the UN that covers the northern half of the globe, the global and global North, we always say that we cover the region, Vancouver to Vladivostok.
We have 56 member states, including Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Western Balkans.
UNC was established in 1947 and since then, housing has been part of our agenda.
It's been from the initial starts of reconstructing Europe to today addressing the housing crisis and the question of affordability of housing and adequacy of housing.
This work at UNECE is led through the committee on urban development, housing, and land management, an intergovernmental body which supports governments in the development of policies and reforms, provides evidence and tools and fosters peer learning across the region and the different housing systems and experiences that we have in the UEC region.
And housing has always been an important area of work, but today it reached another level with countries facing housing affordability pressures, aging housing stock, growing inequality.
It's a major concern in our region, in particular for low income households and vulnerable groups.
Some of them spend up to 40% of their income on housing, but also younger generations who do not manage to find a place to live and many other also the middle income groups that are just not finding affordable places in the city.
So in our region and especially the countries with economies in transition, we see high ownership rates, but low affordability, at the same time, limited rental schemes and social public housing stock that is very limited or not existing and the problem of aging and energy inefficient buildings.
So today, we will look at how the housing policy frameworks that we've been developing at the UN ECE can help countries in our region to meet SDG 11 targets, especially SDG 11.1.
And also to reflect a bit on what are the different tools that we've been developing with a special focus on the country profiles that we've been developing in the region to explain a bit more what this tool is all about, how it's been helping countries, and then moving over to an example from Spain, seeing how the issue of data and data fragmentation, the usability of data has been supporting the implementation of the SDGs and touching on the points of multilevel governance.
So how is housing actually being being addressed across the different level of governance, what kind of mechanisms do we have there to support housing affordability and the implementation of housing policies? At UNECE in 2015, we developed a Geneva UN Charter on sustainable housing, which is a guiding document where governments agreed on or established common principles on housing, housing affordability, environmental sustainability, social inclusion, public participation, and the cultural dimension of housing.
And these common principles provided the foundation for continuation of work that we did together with the human habitat and Housing Europe on the housing 2030 work where we looked more into policy options and good practices that exist around the region and concrete recommendations to governments.
In this document, there was also the explicit link then to SDGs and SDG implementation and how housing is supporting SDG implementation.
And then in 2024, we conducted a study on one hand, a survey among our member states, and then also based on data that is available on housing to specify a bit more what are the exact housing challenges and the priorities for our UN EC region and Based on when this work was presented at our committee meeting, there wasn't the request to now that we have these guiding principles, the data to put this into a framework for governments to commit to taking action.
In 2025 at our committee meeting, we adopted the ministerial commitments on housing sustainability and affordability, a set of 12 commitments, um to scale up affordable housing, energy efficiency and housing, to strengthen multi level governance, improve the data fragmentation, reduce the data fragmentation by working and collecting the data across different levels of governance.
This is for us the point where we're standing now of what is the next step? How can we translate these commitments into practical actions? How can we, um, to support governance in making this into concrete deliverables.
One tool that we've been producing and working on at the UN ECE are the country profiles on urban development, housing, and land management.
It's one of our flagship products that we've been producing for 30 years already.
So a country profile is an independent assessment by a group of experts prepared at the request of governments.
And we go through the different dimensions.
We look at the urban development of a country, we review the housing sector and the land sector and we produce concrete recommendations to the government.
And so the outcome of these country profiles are then a complete to do list, let's say, or a checklist for a government, what does it need to do to improve the housing situation in the country.
We would like to use the session today to explain a bit more what these country profiles are, what are the lessons we can learn from the country profiles that have been produced over the last year.
We have a concrete example of Montenegro, the most recent country profile that we finalized and then look into the data link as I mentioned.
So Without further ado, I would like to introduce our first speaker, misses Doris Andoni.
Miss Andoni is an independent housing expert from Albania.
She's also been a chair to our committee on urban development, housing, and land management, and she was involved as an independent expert in the preparation of the most recent country profiles that we prepared.
I think you can give us a good overview of what are lessons, what are commonalities or differences that we found out through this country profile.
Doris, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Mike, and thank you for this extraordinary organization and this beautiful city.
I'm very happy to be for the first time here in Baku, which I like very much, at least the little bit that I saw.
Um, I would like to take from what Mike had mentioned in the beginning.
She was making a little bit of history, and I think that I am a bit of part of this history because I'm an architect by training, but since 30 years I've been engaged in drafting, proposing, and implementing housing policies and programs in Albania.
And since the first days of my work in the ministry some 30 years ago, first documents that I was reading at that time, were documents with some acronyms that for me were very strange like UN ECE, ECE, HBP, all these UN acronyms, which are difficult for someone to understand.
At the time we didn't have even Google to Google what it is about.
But for me, it was not important that part.
What was important was inside of this document.
These documents open my horizon for the housing policy, what was happening in different countries and what different countries were facing and what challenges were they facing and how they were addressing those.
For example, one of those documents that has remained in my memory was a report from UNECE sessions from Ireland that was claiming about the rent control that has suffocated the rental market at the time.
Or those documents that were talking about the new paradigm shifts that has withdrawn the government from housing provision but has not solved problems for the poor.
On the contrary, has worsening sometimes.
So I was also facing for the first time terms like evictions, forced evictions, tenure security.
These were the first insight that I got from these documents and why do I bring it here? Because it's very important to understand the role that this international organization has played in rising knowledge, in building knowledge, and in sharing this knowledge among our committee has 56 member states, as it was mentioned by Mike.
And that's why it is important to highlight not only what has been done, but also what during my membership in this committee, I was appointed as representative of Albania some 23 years ago and twice, I have been chair of the committee and looking at the documents, important documents that are discussed and endorsed by the committee leads to transformation.
For example, in Albania, based on the first country profile, I've been involved in five countries, different countries for developing since 2002, the country profile two times for Albania.
The first country profile for Albania in 2002 was used to undertake the reform of housing policy that was a radical change.
It was not possible doing that radical change without having a solid basis such as a document from the United Nations.
You could present it to the government as recommendations from the United Nations and it gets it got support from them.
Okay.
And Mike mentioned Geneva UN Charter, which is one of the most important, the most important for the moment document and I hope that it can be still revised and reflected, although it covers all the aspects of housing, but it always have space for updating it.
Its components are always present in our work environment, and housing is so intersectorial.
It's environment, its economy.
Can we change? Okay.
Yeah.
Thank you.
It's economy, it's social inclusion, participation, it's also cultural adequacy, which is also very important in housing.
On the other side, the ministerial commitments.
Ministerial commitments doesn't come from the Yeah, from the air.
It comes from the countries by themselves, and it comes also from country profiles.
What is identified as major problems and surveys also as Mike said, as priority and major challenges from countries, they are reflected in the commitments of the ministerial.
On the other side, these commitments then turn back as instruments for reflecting in the country profile.
How we do that, it's okay.
We do it by analyzing by different tools that are offered or are developed by UNECE and one of them is the country profile.
So what do we do in the country profile? We go in the countries and we analyze the economic situation, the housing in the big picture of economy and social development and also environmental issues and we highlight which are the major challenges that the countries are facing in these countries.
In these three last country profiles, Montenegro, Armenia is still a draft and Albania that was finalized in 2023.
There are three major challenges that go across the three countries, which are affordability, the governance, and the financing housing.
What we found with the first challenge affordability, it's not something new.
It is something that also the greater region is facing.
This is reflected also in the very new affordable and the first of its kind affordable housing plan of EU that was adopted last year that highlighted the biggest problems that countries in the EU are facing nowadays, 60% increase of housing prices in the last ten years, 20% of the housing stock is, um, uninhabited, and the surge of the short rental up to 93 increase 2018-2024, which shows for a very stressful situation in housing affordability in EU countries.
But the situation is not much different in our region.
We have the same equally stark figures.
For example, Yeah.
The Albania country profiles brings a big paradox.
Albania perhaps is the country with the highest vacancy rates, 33% I don't say vacancy, but uninhabited for different reasons.
There may be vacant, secondary, abandoned homes, and so on.
But on the other side, it has the highest percentage of overcrowding, which is 58%.
I'm not so sure about this real figure of representing this 58%, but this is from Eurostat and Eurostat has got it from SI, the survey of living standards.
Um, but what does it show? It shows that there is a big skewness in the distribution of housing consumption.
So there are a few families that owns more than two houses, and the biggest part of the society, they face big problems with housing adequacy.
And affordability.
The same situation is also in Armenia where there is a lack of investments or low level of investments and high demand, which brings to high prices.
In Montenegro, the same situation with affordability because of the spurge or um, increase demand in the coastal areas for tourist development and short rental, which leave out the families.
I would like to bring here from my own experience how it affects the short term lettings, those that need a house.
For example, from my own work, a family from North Albania, she was a single mother.
With a son of 18, 19-years-old that was suffering from depression and because of not having this regular rent contract, they were changing the apartments all the time and his situation was degrading.
The same in South of Albania where the tourism explode only in three months and during the nine months is almost empty the city.
The problem of these families that needs stable housing becomes very, very challenging.
And it is not a solution even what the municipality offer them, local government, they offer some subsidy to rent in the market, but the market is not there for three months.
These are things that are highlighted by the analysis that the culture profile does and also from my own work in my country.
But the affordability has another side of the coin, which is adequacy because the house can be afforded The house can be affordable, but it may be not habitable because it can be not safe, it can be unhealthy, represent different problems of security, safety, and so on.
For example, in Um, in Armenia, 600 multi apartment buildings are in critical conditions because they are built before 90s with low standards.
Also because of the earthquake of 89, they are damaged and they need to be replaced or refurbished.
Overcrowding I mentioned in Albania, but informal settlement is also mentioned as a potential problem for quality adequacy.
However, I would say that because of the long time now investments in upgrading the informal settlements, I wouldn't put so much as a big problem, adequacy of informal settlements.
Yes, they face the risk of evictions, but this is not only for them.
The way how it is developed nowadays, Albania, but this is another discussion.
For me, I think that it is a rising problem, the quality of the new buildings.
Because last month, we had a fire in a building that exploded and it took all the building immediately.
That happened because of the material that was used for thermal insulation.
All the new buildings are using this material that is very dangerous and unsafe for the life of them if something happens.
This is something that has to be considered by our government.
In Montenegro, there is a problem of quality of buildings, especially because of lack of management and maintenance, although the law is there, but there are no structures in place.
What does the country profile do in these cases? They recommend the countries to undertake programs of urban regeneration.
As you can see, the It goes in one of the commitments of the ministerial, which is urban regeneration and adequate housing.
Urban regeneration is also a program which has two sides.
It's very good for the cities because it regenerates economy, social connections or well, social connection, perhaps not so much, but businesses and architecture and quality of life.
But on the other side, it has its own risk because risk of evictions, of gentrification and losing the social bonds that already exist in communities.
The second challenge is the multi level governance, as I mentioned, and here I will not go very thorough because we will have Aleksander or speaking more thoroughly on that.
But what the country profile highlights is that What the laws at the national government and the capacities of local governments, they don't match.
Legal framework provides all functions that local government has to provide in terms of housing, but it does not provide necessary support, financial, human support, and so on.
Decentralization is a process is not an end point.
For example, in Albania, it has started since 2000 with the law decentralization and housing was part of decentralization.
It went well for a certain time.
Now there is a tendency again to gather the power in the center.
I see this tendency in some other countries.
For me, There are some functions that are very much related with the communities we serve in and services, providing services to communities, which should be left to local governments because they can act better, of course, if they are supported.
For example, in Montenegro, Montenegro is a small country municipalities are very small.
It is very difficult to find human capacities to act in the specific areas.
However, I still think that by a continuous support to these municipalities, for example, Italy has municipalities with 1,000 inhabitants and they function.
But this is a tradition because they have started this many years ago.
So if we continue supporting local governments, we will have better situation at the local level.
And the last challenge that I will touch upon is the financing, which is almost for granted that housing lack financing.
Housing is a very expensive function.
If we think as a classic financing from the budget to to build and to provide housing.
But there are many, many different ways how to generate different sources of financing.
Problems arising are evidence in all the three countries of financing periodically and not in a continuous way.
Um, I would like to mention that, for example, in the case of Montenegro, we have been providing also another project to support them in developing prefeasibility study for social housing and for affordable housing.
Our recommendation is to look forward to look long term and not for moment solution because solutions that are given for the moment, they don't last, they end there.
They just provide a product, but not a process that lasts long.
This is more or less what I wanted to, I just skipped the slides, but, in essence, this is the summary of what the country profile provides.
It's structured, is based on the international documents, and I didn't mention, but for me, very important in my personal work, but also as consultant is to refer to these normative documents like, for example, the right to adequate housing.
And the specific comments or general comments number four and seven, which specify the elements of the right to adequate housing, which make this right to adequate housing concrete and doesn't leave space for speculation.
Also, the one important which I love very much and I have it also here is the SDGs, the SDG 11 and target 11.1.
I've been insisting in the case of Albania to amend the law and to include these elements in the elements of the right to adequate housing in the legislation.
We have succeeded to include them as a political priority, housing policy priority, and also SDG to translate slums into Albanian context.
We translate it as inadequate neighborhood and um and settlements, and also to budget this SDG, how to combine with programs that are provided in the law and also to budget this SDG 11.1.
And this is the final one which I wanted to look forward in the future because we have only four years up to 2030 and we have to see sincerely and also honestly what we have been doing, what we have achieved, and what we couldn't achieve, and why we couldn't achieve the target and start working for the future for the next term until 2036, I think will be yes, Katia will be the fourth UN Habitat conference.
So we have to be prepared and this work that we are doing with U NECE should be used as a basis for the future.
Thank you.
No problem.
Thank you very much.
Are there any immediate questions to Doris? I think if there's some question for clarification, something you would like to know better, I think we just take the time now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I would like to ask you, which is the main lesson that you have learned in 30 years of expertise in housing as a consultant that can be translated into a recommendation to policymakers.
Yeah, thank you.
Well, it is difficult to summarize in one recommendation, but yeah, you mentioned it at the end, you mentioned the political priority.
So if we can discuss, we can talk, we can prepare documents, but if politics is not there, so political priority is not there is not possible to do.
Sometimes I Well, I have used both situations in my career.
I used to say that it's better when housing has this political priority because it's not biased.
You can act and you can work without any political influence.
For example, I remember some years ago with a party that came into power that was from the right side, conservative party.
We just started the social housing program.
They said that This is not a program for us because the Conservative Party is not for social housing.
I said, Look, we don't have any social housing, so we are not at the stage to speak about not accepting social housing.
But that was the only moment that housing has some political attention.
That's why I said that sometimes it's good not to have this political attention, but to do things, you need for sure the political support.
Great.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for the insights, Doris.
I think political prioritization is a key first to actually request the issuance of a country profile.
We're not going into a country without the explicit request by the government.
I think that's the first step.
But then of course, and that's something also I think that became really clear is the implementation of the recommendations that the experts make they are not implemented in a few months.
We see that years after the government is still working on implementing and actually for a colleague from Slovakia, I was saying they did the country profile 20 years ago, they still have recommendations that they're implementing.
It's a document that gives an outline for government activities for quite sometime in the future.
I would invite now Rad Mia Link from Montenegro.
She is the acting director on legalization of illegal structures.
For us, she's the national focal point for Montenegro our interlocutor and the key person driving the preparation of the country profile of Montenegro.
The country profile has just been launched in March, so we're at this point where it's very fresh.
But over to you, Red Miller, also to explain a bit what is the motivation of getting this country profile? What are the outcomes and what do you see coming next I Good afternoon, everyone.
My name is Radmil Laino from I represent Ministry of Special Planning Urbanism and state property of Montenegro.
Today, I will try to present analysis and recommendation of the country profile in the field of urban development, housing policy, and land management in Montenegro, which was done by UNEC.
Country profile of Montenegro a provides independent comprehensive assessment of the Montenegrian housing sector formally requested by government of Montenegro in 2022 and publish, like Mike says this year in March.
La launching was this year in March and because of that, we didn't have time to I don't know what to speak about implementation of the recommendation.
And I will try to speak about the analysis of this document and recommendation in the field of housing.
What is motivation to request the country profile in our um with the UNEC, the government of Montenegro requested to do this profile to navigate intense period of urban transformation in Montenegro and to align domestic legislation with the EU accession process and the UN Sustainable Development Goals SDG.
We need independent expert analysis to address several issues.
First, we need to reform social housing policies.
All housing policies.
We need to have a recommendation for, of course, uncontrolled urbanization.
I think these documents highlights the importance of this profile.
It provides recommendation that should encourage and influence further policy developments.
In just a moment.
Montenegro is since regaining independence in 2006, experienced a rapid economic and transformation.
Today, we are official front runner of the EU accession process in the Western Balkans, having opened 33 negotiation chapters, our government aims to close all chapters by the end of this year with the ultimate goal to become a full EU member state by 2028.
Of these 33 open chapters, all chapters that are subject of negotiation and we close provisionally 14 chapters so far.
The core focus, of course, in the area of US accession is rule of law, progress in Chapters 23 and 24, economic criteria, and the legislative alignment in this area.
I In these documents constrain analysis of demographic regional disparities and immigration in the Montenegro.
Montenegro total population remains relatively stable at around 623,000 citizens.
However, beneath the stable surface lies a massive internal shift.
More than 67% of the population lives in urban areas.
Today, almost half of the entire country population is concentrated in just three municipalities, Pots and N Chichenbar this intense concentration is putting unprecedented strain on local water waste and transport infrastructure.
This kind of urbanization has created a profound geographic economic divides from the north and the south of the country.
Coastal region and the capital city of Pod Gori act as a hyper developed economic engines, but northern region is suffering from the stagnation and depopulation.
We have a lot of problems in urban planning.
We have a lot of informal objects.
In this last year, we have a lot of activities in our jurisdiction of our ministry.
We have passed a special plan.
We have our government passed this housing policy strategy.
We have Assembly passed three new laws in this area, law on construction, a law on urban planning, and law on legalization.
There is a huge work in this area in our country in these past two years.
I hope this profile and our strategic document in the field of housing will be somehow push for this policy to expand and to expand in the future period.
About the analysis affordability and social housing crisis.
I already said that we need new policy in social housing, of course.
To understand some crisis, we must look back at the post socialism reforms in the 90s.
In that period, we have a rapid privatization resulting in extremely high home ownership rate in Montenegro.
95% of people own their houses.
We don't have state rental housing.
However, a Montenegro house price to income ratio standards one to 8.6, which is more than double than the internationally recognized UN habitat sustainability benchmarks.
Meanwhile, social or affordable public rental housing represents 0.6% of the national stock, which is microscopic.
I which bring us I will not speak about recommendation and the problems in because in other areas, but I will speak only about this strategic recommendation in the housing because we don't have time.
Okay.
Like I said, the government adopted new housing strategy, and we have when of course, the group of experts did the profile, we have a somehow confirmation of the good policy that we are going to implement in the future period.
What is that recommendation? First is established National Housing fund.
Our strategy, our strategy recommend as one goal like institutional reform to because we don't have in Montenegro, we don't have a body that took policies in whole country.
We are very small country.
We need to have centralized that because most of municipalities, like Doris says, don't have people, human resources, and financial resources to deal with the social housing.
And because as I said, we have 60,000 people in Montenegro, and I think it's better that we have one state organ which are going to establish in original in the north, in the South, and on the coastal zone.
Establish National Housing Fund in Montenegro because we don't have it.
And of course, we have to expanding rental options, develop regulated, supported by the state affordable rental sector to support young families and other families, but young families is a target group, of course.
Ensure effective implementation of the new housing strategy, adopt a new law for social and affordable housing.
We already done we are in in working with the new law, introducing definition and eligibility criteria, at expand the rental housing sector, strengthen municipal capacity and mandates for local housing plans, strengthening the legal framework for housing management and maintenance and modernized management practices.
Enhance gender equality, and gender consideration in the house policy, and improve data collection for evidence based policy for social and affordable housing because we have a very lack of data in this field.
Thank you for your attention.
Thank you very much, Ad Mila.
Just to add, for the country profile of Montenegro, what we do a bit differently this time is that we are Building on the recommendation, we're working on two feasibility studies.
We have experts who are looking into models of developing social rental markets in the country as well as affordable home ownership schemes that we hope that this speeds up a bit the implementation on the ground, we have these two feasibility studies and the models that are proposed to the government funded by the Council of Europe Development Bank to see that these are already models that could be interesting by the bank to then take on and financially support the investment so that the whole implementation of the recommendations can take place a bit faster.
We One of the key challenges was the lack of data.
It's the data available at municipalities, but also the fragmentation of data that's available.
I think for us, we're looking forward to now hearing from Spain.
Spain doesn't have a presentation, by the way, on how you've been and how you've been addressing this data fragmentation and challenge also across the different level of governments and how it helps you to get more information on the status of SEG 11 implementation.
I'm very pleased to introduce Mr.
David Pill.
He is the Director General of the 2030 agenda at the Ministry of social rights, Consumer Affairs and 2030 Agenda of Spain.
Thank you very much for being with us.
Thank you.
Good evening to everybody.
It's a pleasure to be here.
Let me start by framing my intervention in this global housing problems that we are debating now in the World forum.
Also some main messages that we also in the UNEC Assembly last month in Geneva.
And also referring to housing and then go to the data now because something important our lesson learning data.
But first of all, we are very in favor of the background paper presented here and debate here and the frame that started this morning in the Dialogue one because I think it's something very good for debate the global problems of the world and trying to build alliance.
Especially for us in Southern Europe regarding to the financiation of housing causes, also related to the housing issues with climate change that is very important, but also some situation that we are not living like armed conflicts or displacement or situation of informal neighborhoods that they are essential for our rights, and we have to be very on the human rights perspective on the international law that is the perspective of the Spanish government in all the issues just to have a livable world and it's not something like we have it now.
So in this 26, when we presented our vision in Geneva, we talked about, we have to implement as much as we can as fast as we can the 2030 agenda from now to 2030, and housing is one of the main issues and the main problems all over the world.
So we are doing by the international agenda that we are very satisfied in the model.
The sustainable development model is something like is working in Spain in terms of economic growth, social growth, beyond GDP growth benefits, but it has some issues, let's say some red tax, and especially housing is one of them that maybe could tackle all the systems.
So something like a reinforced to action in the housing.
So we are doing that also by national plannings, like sustainable development strategic strategies.
We launched our second national planning this very year.
We are also strengthening our policy coherence system.
Spain has reinforced all the things, especially the monitoring and the data and we will be doing that.
I will be speaking to you next.
But very important for us is our main lesson learned is that this new strategy related with International 2030 agenda strategy is embedding SDGs into the mainstream policymaking.
Strategies they are not divided, they are interlinked.
So structural challenges persist in areas, as I mentioned, housing affordability is one of them, but there are others like child poverty or even malnutrition that is our SDG two adaptation.
So we have suffered malnutrition.
We need to tackle also the climate adaptation, and also we are building that on this successful model because we are now very satisfied on the energy, electrical, renewable energy production and transformation.
So building from that, we have to tackle the challenges.
This is very important in housing is in the core because we have to shift from quantity to quality to tackle all the things that the citizens are demanding that and we cannot forget that 2030 agenda or the international agendas that are attacking in this very moment.
Of the international system, but and they are acting as basic rights, and this is something like citizens all over the world understand and housing is, I think the best example.
If housing SDG 11 is not interlinked with climate change, with gender issues, with poverty, inequalities, also the future, the possibility of production of an electrical renewal, what is? We need to tackle housing for our citizens and also for the sake of the international system.
For us, it's also very important trying to do in a way of policy cohedence.
So we are working on that very highly.
We discussed it in Geneva.
But going to the point, going to the SDG 11, don't forget that SDG 11 is not only housing as the content, this is something like all concrete in the new urban agenda.
It's very linked.
Our agendas are interlinked and also in the Spanish urban agenda, they are very interlinked with our sustainable development strategy.
We have to work with all the ten goals of the 11 SDG that they are very good because they are tackling all the things that they are housing is one of them, but we are trying to ensure the future and the sake and the dignity of the communities, especially cities, but also urban areas and rural areas.
This is why we are doing in different aspect of the SDG 11 we will be reviewing in New York soon in two months.
But it's very good the I am mentioning that because we need to tackle also in the climate devastation, because we have the climate risk reduction target.
We have to tackle also the cultural activity.
We have to work for the contamination issues and we are doing in a very good manner, but we have one of our indicators that are saying that we have some problems, especially in the house affordability, because as all the European countries and something like international trend, we are suffering From this financial, we need to go to the regulatory aspects.
So we launched actions, I will briefly mention, but this is the bad indicator that they are signal with direct signal as the SDGs that they are doing that we need to work mark.
And also, we have to mention that we are doing well in contamination or other things like in the SDG 11.
We will review and we'll send in as a country for the reports of the SDGs.
It's important to say that this significant challenge in access of housing due to the high price of buying and especially renting, they are they are saying that they are something like they are suffering a lot of population, especially young people, women, migrant people in Spain, and they are also dividing the society, the social cohesion of the society.
So it's something like we need to tackle down.
But this is especially in this group.
I So going to the data because it's your main question.
So our lesson learned, with this framework.
We can say that we are measuring the SDG 11 with the support of our National Institute of Statistics.
It's something like a strong pathway with robust indicators in all the goals.
And these are very successful because they managed to introduce the indicators through ten years work one by one because many of them they are not in our data, so you have to work with that.
They are doing a very good job.
We have this kind of indicators.
I think many of them are in a good job.
They are constantly done by the regional authorities, by the local authorities provide to the state.
Going to this national statistics.
This is one of the main lesson learns or something like trying to build something like related administrative bodies in control of data.
And the second one is also that we have several sources, and we are going to the first or one of the biggest challenges that we're having is that we are a country that we are going very deep in the 2030 agenda, we are working a lot with the localization agenda.
So we have something like international plannings, national plannings, regional and local plannings.
So we are different plannings with different data, with different indicators, not all of them, they are robust as the National Institute of Statistics.
So we have a problem because if we can't measure what we are doing, we cannot count what is good and we cannot tackle what is not going so well.
So our main issues now and it's something also related to the Spanish urban agenda, because every one of these plans, of course, has indicators.
So we are very in touch.
We are very on the working on this kind of missions issue that working all the administration, if we can hold society tackle for a mission in this way, tackle for the housing issue with all the SDGs 11 dimension.
But as we have something like this panorama, it's difficult to mix the data.
It's difficult to mix the data.
So we are trying to work for our fourth national voluntary review in 2027, trying to align the data because that's why we do the strategy of development, trying to align our localization plans in four main umbrellas of challenges and housing in all of them.
Trying to align the plans of the regions and the municipalities and trying to align in the future the data.
But we have this problem of the fragmentation.
I think everybody has in this world.
At the same time, we are trying to promote the vision GDP indicators and trying to promote the integration of human rights.
We have something very difficult challenge.
This is one for the data and this is very important.
But don't forget that I was mentioning in my first words of the presentation that we also to communicate to the citizens also in narratives and it's very important related to the scientific evidence.
So lastly for my point.
So what we are doing in housing, I would like to focus here on returning to the global aspect and finalizing my intervention.
What we are doing in housing is trying to tackle and it's also related with data.
We need better data in houses empties.
Albania and Montenegro were presented.
Of course, we have this kind of data, but it's not so clear, it's not so transparent, not so robust as we need it.
For instance, in our sustainable development strategy, we align our national planning with statists done for our Institute of National Statics, or if not, if we don't have it with Eurostat because they are there.
They are robust, they are traceable.
You can download it.
They are uploaded every month or every week.
We can go to the data we have it.
But especially if we go to housing regarding not only to the SCG 11, we need more data.
So the government is launching an initiative to monitoring the prices, especially very important in the renting market.
We need to monitor the prices because we launched for this kind of regulation issue in the market alone trying to tople down some prices in scenarios that they are very very serious problems.
So we need these prices come down, these statistics as much better as we can, and also related with all the things that they are interconnected in the housing problems, especially houses empties, the difficulties of the market.
If we go to the touristic sector that they are stressing our cities.
So we are working as one of the four main issues is increasing funding, state funding, and region funding to launch something like a social renew project for the years to come.
So it's something for the long term.
We are also tackling the issue of touristic housing, trying to get the houses that they are in the market legal, completely legal in terms of the relation with hotels, the touristic sector, and also with the citizens and trying if these houses they are not in this legal system, try to rebirth and reintroduce in the housing sector for renting or for buying.
We are doing also some things in evictions in Spain, unfortunately, also we have some problems with eviction with mortgages and now especially with renting.
And also launching projects and programs for people with vulnerabilities.
For instance, people that they are under poverty, specific groups that they are suffering problems as a compliment because this housing problem is for all, so we need to tackle the majority of the population, but don't forget that we are trying not to leave no one behind.
So with this focus So these things we can do it.
Our main lesson les in terms of data is try to build on your National Statistics Institute that they are the more serious, the more robust one.
Try to connect, if not, with the urostat data that they are also very good and very robust.
Try to organize these fragmented ambience we have with the states and the regional and the local activities trying to align them, at least aligning them, trying to confront and trying to work in every one of these administration levels.
I don't have time just to say it, but we are working in all these levels, working hand by hand with our regions and our municipalities.
Also, if we can, this is let's say our work for the sake for the future regarding to the World Um Forum, because we need to tackle housing as a global problem.
That's it.
It's one of the major issues.
We need to highlight in the high level political forum that housing is also for the European countries and also for the countries of the UNEC is something like a problem that we need to tackle down.
Every region has their own problems, but some of them are global, so we need to tackle global and don't forget that we need hand by hand to tackle some problems that they are not presented now, for instance, war or genocide.
But of course, we don't like to have it in the future, but who knows in the future.
That's my work.
Great.
Thank you very much.
Are there any immediate follow up questions or requests for clarification? Yes.
Doris, you have a question.
It's more comment, but also can be a question because I work a lot with our Institute of Statistics and I rely on those datas because they are official data.
When it comes to SDG 11, or the data that they report look very abstract.
Well, when I was working for the public administration, we work on housing and we know where are the problems, what kind of problems, how to define the areas which are for us, inadequate neighborhood.
How to connect these statistics data with the reality what is happening there.
What do you think about digitalization and mapping these informal or inadequate slum areas, which has its own risks because it's related with privacy, with danger, with security, safety, and so on.
But these are my two questions.
Thanks a lot for your comment.
I think we need with this work of the statists we have to go to every ten goals of the SDG 11 and trying to translate into good data.
For instance, if we tackle contamination, we need some good indicators to go to contamination.
If we go to the adequate and this is the main problem, I think, adequate affordability, how is the definition.
But we have also the Let's say the hands of the definition of the UN definitions, the international definition, the UNAC definitions, and also trying to adapt to the situation.
We are not in of course, we have some informal settlements.
They are not so much fortunately we are working so hard for eradicating all of them and trying to have this population in adequate homes.
But regarding privacy, you can do surveys, you can do a You can do this quality and quantity work.
I was reminded that in a few days there was an event holded by UN Habitat in Spain about homeless people.
I was regarding this kind of data regarding the homeless people that they are suffering the most thing, the most dangerous thing that they don't have home at all.
But they are working the data through surveys that they are private with people, they are qualitative, they are sociologists, and in the end, they have the data.
They have the data.
It's something like a long term work.
So I don't want to say that our example is the unique example and it's something like I was mentioning that we have some challenges regarding fragmentation.
But if you go to I agree with you that we don't need something like abstract numbers and we need something like crescibles.
To build this kind of trends, we need something like a very hard work.
Because we need something like data that we can translate to our citizens saying that we are improving or we are not.
What are the challenges? But for instance, for the informal settlements, I recommend something like this kind of qualitative and quantitative work that is good just to know the trend and also the mapping with the local level and also trying to work all the administration.
Thank you very much.
I think in the interest of time, we move over to our last presentation.
David was touching on the different level of governance where you're trying to get the data and to harmonize it and harmonize the methodology.
This requires a lot of coordination and housing per se is a topic that is defined at national level but implemented as well as the local level.
So I would just hand over to Alexandra to talk a bit more about multi level governance as a delivery mechanism and what do we need to make housing work in a multilevel governance setting.
Alexander Hijai is a senior lecturer at the University of Geneva and he's also the chair of the Geneva UN Center of Excellence on Smart Sustainable Cities and I Yeah, in housing.
Over to you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mike, and thank you for giving the floor.
It's I'm very privileged to come after the speakers because it gives me a little bit of time to think also about the sequence of these presentations.
You gave me 15 minutes and I will use them the specific thing is to talk about this thread that connects these various inputs that we just heard.
You heard about the UNECE country profiles and the importance of the case of obviously Montenegro and Spain as a case in point.
National governments that has built a working vertical chain from SDG strategy and I'm bringing in the case of Spain to municipal housing delivery.
You also heard about the case of Montenegro and thank you for inviting us about the ministerial input.
But the conversation that is taking place, I'm sure is across ministries in Montenegro.
This is something that uh, is detrimental to the delivery capacity when it comes to housing, and multilevel governance is not a fourth story on top of these tree, but is a thread or connector of these three different inputs.
Without multilevel governance, country providers remain reports.
And the doors you are well placed to know that.
To incapacitate the reports, we need to go from the global architecture to local delivery capacity.
Again, Spain's model remains a case study.
Montenegro reform remains ongoing.
But nevertheless, these multi level governance frameworks can enable our capacity to move ahead.
Thank you.
First, I would like to bring the importance of the policy cycles for SDG housing that multilevel governance is.
First of all, obviously, the commitment and it goes from the commitment to diagnosis, learning, action, and delivery.
Commitment is what you described initially, Mikey, about taking stock of the 2025 UNIC Ministerial Declaration.
The diagnosis deals with the UNIC country profiles and there as you mentioned some of them.
In the case of Albania, for example, this has been a case in point that these reports are extremely important to trigger the conversation across different stakeholders to start with.
The illustration of learning that this multi level governance framework can bring to Spain and Montenegro.
Peer exchange, the case of voluntary local reviews is the best example that these peer exchanges do matter.
Multilevel governance also triggers a language and common understanding on national reform.
And obviously, the fifth element, which is the delivery, it brings the local housing outcome closer to the SDG.
I don't want to say matching, but closer to the SDG goals.
The um The important for us is to understand that multi level governance as connective tissue with these three pillars need to incapacitate the vertical coordination that connects local, regional, national and global institutions and also create the feedback loops that allow ministerial commitment to cascade downward to local evidence to rise upward.
Horizontal integration breaks the silos between housing, land, transport, finance, and social policy at the same governance level and transnational links allow cities to network internationally in the form of mayors that UNECD has been bringing as a new platform to cities is, again, a very interesting casing point.
The descriptions that I'm presenting here has also to do and this is something that I forgot to mention of a joint work that the Center of Excellence, which is basically the science policy interface between the scientific community and policy formulator in Geneva in collaboration with colleagues in Italy, France and the UK and it brings to the attention the very practical elements of multilevel governance.
A The stage one, which is basically these five stages.
The stage one of these five stages is commitment, as I was saying, from ministerial declaration to governance architecture.
This slide really anchors, again, taking stock of the 2025 ministerial commitments that translate each key commitment into what it demands from a governance architecture.
This ministerial meeting produced five commitments, as you can see.
The three of them are governance commitments, not housing supply targets.
I want to precise about what each one demands.
First of all, strengthening multi level governance between national, regional and local authorities is not what I would call an aspirational language.
It is a request to build a specific architecture.
The triplar structure described in the Geneva Charter paper that I referred to is vertical coordination from the ministry to municipality, horizontal integration across housing and related policy domains and transnational links that allow the governments to learn from each other experience.
The second element is the improving data and financing framework.
Naming the diagnostic infrastructures.
This is where UNEC country profile kicks in, not as reports, as I was saying, but as governance tools that create the shared evidence based on policy language that multi level coordination requires.
Data driven decision making in housing requires data sharing across governance levels and once again, multi level governance is what makes that possible by breaking the silos where information it's often enclosed.
Finally, the third element is enabling cities and municipalities to deliver affordable housing outcomes where is the final mile test.
It is also the commitment that is most frequently absent from national housing strategies.
The paper that we worked on puts it directly, national policies without local adaptation generate cost mismatches.
Obviously, one size doesn't fit all and diminishing the failure to negotiate to local conditions in the design phase.
This commitment is an acknowledgment of that structural failure and mandate to address it.
The second stage is regarding the diagnosis.
Again, when I was listening to you, Doris, about the country profile of Albania, country profiles as the multi level governance mirror, and again, once again, you mentioned very nicely that Albania radical change without the sound base that UN document would have been difficult cost or taking more time.
And that's where these country profiles kick in.
Diagnostic is a multilevel governance act, I would say.
Those country profiles are part of the multilevel governance because of the multi level conversation that they forces, and this is what I listening to you, I realize is the most important element and the feedback that they trigger across different levels of decision making.
Uh, traces the capacity to come up with a circularity system, to which information, resources, decision can flow from global but obviously ministerial, to the local level.
Um.
When I heard the case of Montenegro, which I'm with the case of Montenegro that I'm not very familiar with, it was confirming once again that the multi level governance is a framework that can enable the flow of information and resources from different levels of decision making, but also across ministries.
The country profiles do four things that national housing statistics may not necessarily be able to do.
They map the governance chain showing not just what the law says, but where the responsibility lies.
They diagnose the capacity to deficits and subnational levels.
They name the financing gaps that cause housing investment to evaporate between national allocation and local delivery.
And they create a shared policy language across ministries and governance levels that I was mentioning.
This last function is very importantly, the most underappreciated, I believe.
Again, going back to this work that we did with our colleagues, we mentioned the fact that transitions to data driven decision making in housing, for example, require the sharing of the data from multiple levels of governance.
This example illustrates once again that multi level governance is what makes the sharing institutionally possible by breaking the silos where disinformation is often enclosed by establishing the design conducts across institutions.
The governance gap that has driven a problem that sectoral analysis could not make, and this is the stage two, is extremely important.
Sorry, I think I went too fast on one of the Here is the stage two.
The stage two is the diagnostic and country profile as the multilevel governance mirror.
The a The key argument here is that the diagnosis is an MLG, as I was saying, act, and it's based on the map that governance chain.
It also poses the importance of diagnosis capacity deficit, names the financing gap, and creates shared policy language.
The case once again of Montenegro is very interesting for us.
You need to have some coordination across different levels of decision making, but also across ministries and What came to our mind is that there are some unregulated construction driven by governance gaps, not the demand alone, and the profile create shared diagnostic languages.
First across ministries dialogue on housing governance was as a result of that.
Now driving a national reform agenda is anchored in not just the political will, but also the capacity to deliver.
And why this diagnostic is an MLG act, it just not analysis.
It's a profile mapping that vertical chain is a governance tool, not just as an audit of the national level, it's value, the multi level conversation it forces between ministries, between levels of government and between data producers.
It diagnosis without a governance framework produces reports, not reform, and this is what I mentioned previously.
A MLG converts the profile from an analytical exercise into a policy instrument.
Now the stage three and four is extremely important when it comes to analyzing the importance of multilevel governance.
It's about learning and action.
This slide really introduces the circularity system or the circular system metaphor, the conceptual frame of the feedback loops.
Spain is not used as a template, but as a proof that the vertical chain is achievable.
The four lessons connect directly to recommendations that we heard, institutionalized feedback loops, embed multi level governance in administrative architecture, build fiscal capacity, and design data infrastructure.
The feedback loop at the bottom of the spin chain is the element most absent in transition economies that we see can produce a certain failure or delay the output.
The chain has four levels, obviously.
It has a national level, housing embedded in the SDG strategy as a cross cutting commitment with explicit policy objective.
Regional autonomous communities adapt the national frameworks to their specific housing markets and municipal cities operating with a clear mandate financing data architecture, residents, obviously at the end, participatory mechanisms connect community needs upward into the policy system.
I see that the time is running, so I will I will summarize on these findings and move to Here we go.
To this last slide that introduces the concept of capacity gap as the cross cutting barriers to the local delivery.
The three enabler, what we called cards on fiscal autonomy on VLRs as the operational mechanisms of multilevel governance, capacity building as a continuous investment.
The MLG multilevel governance delivery framework on the right synthesizes the full policy cycle into a single operational model with paragraph reference to the paper's recommendation.
Delivery is where the policy cycle either completes or breaks, and it breaks in most transition economies if they are not connected to the municipal level.
What we wanted to share within this panel, this opportunity across our work is that for concrete ways to to address concretely these breaks, municipalities are mandated to deliver affordable housing but lack the fiscal tools, no municipal bounds, no land value capture, no predictable transfers.
So planning departments cannot generate or share housing data with national level.
The feedback loop is broken at the source.
National strategies set targets without transferring the resources and authority to meet them.
The tree enabling conditions respond to each of these breaks.
The final the very final closing slide is about what we got from the experience of various country profiles, but also the commitments at the global and national level, ministerial level all the way to the municipal level.
MLGs are the connective tissues of these different policy engines.
Without it, commitments do not reach delivery and with it, SDGs can be achievable.
The link commitment to the delivery change is the translation of the 2025 ministerial commitments, as we saw and I mentioned originally, investing in the local fiscal and technical capacity, is the second one with municipal bonds, land value capture, predictable transfers, and so on.
I don't get further into the detail and finally, build on the feedback infrastructures.
This brings me to this final code.
The housing crisis experienced locally, it must be governed multilaterally, it is won or lost at the local level.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Alexander.
And if I think you ran through this very quickly trying to connect also the different examples that were shared.
There's also an information document online on the UNIC website of the 86th session of the committee that if you would like to learn more about, I think it's worth reading it and diving into the details of multi level government as a framework and the connecting tissue for addressing housing affordability.
Now it's my great honor to introduce Dimitri Mariain the UNIC Deputy Executive Secretary to provide closing remarks to the UN.
Thank you for being with us.
Thank you very much to all the distinguished speakers for being here.
We have a great partnership with all of you and we really appreciate your time to join this panel.
I think Alexandra summarized it really nicely by actually taking a few streams of thought together.
I will not repeat what he said.
Indeed, if there is a housing crisis, this is a bigger disease of sustainable development not working that manifests itself through housing.
The crisis is deep.
The actions need to be multi sectoral and they have to take place at multiple levels.
This is very clear and yet, unfortunately, way too often and here Spain is a major exception, way too often, housing issues are in departments which deal with housing as physical structures, and this is not enough.
We need to look at housing as a structural pillar of sustainable development and we have all the tools in hand.
Not repeat them from the charter to the studies and evidence to now fairly clear housing affordability study, which we also presented at the ministerial in Geneva last year.
We need to join forces.
I was just speaking at the UN roundtable where all UN agencies committed to doing this together with very important leadership from UN habitat.
We need local level action and we had a very visionary statement from the mayor of Kona, who in fact, in my view, formulated in a very succinct fashion what a city can do when national level policymakers often fail.
And this is what Alexandra was talking about.
Multi level governance is not an abstract concept.
It's actually the only way out of this crisis.
We need to take it very seriously, and this is not just about governments.
We need to have an equally strong role for private players because ultimately it is about investment.
It is about jobs, and this is where the private sector comes in.
Everything we do, including everything we do at UC, we need to use as a reform enabler.
If we do a housing and urban development country profile, and we heard some great examples from Montenegro and Albania, we're planning one for Uzbekistan now.
We cannot do this in isolation from the reality of that country from what they actually need.
For example, just now, the Minister from Uzbekistan told me about 20 different things multilateral development banks are planning.
Together with the government in Uzbekistan on spatial planning.
Well, our point of departure is not a UN template for a country profile.
It has to be the reality on the ground, the investment plans, the needs of the cities and only then UN comes in and we have to add value with that work.
This is easier said than done because it changes the paradigm of how we look at things a bit more top down, a bit more standard as the United Nations.
I take away also from this discussion that we need to learn from what we've done, but we need to be even more agile and open minded going forward.
The country profiles for Uzbekistan and Moldova that are coming up will be a test for that.
I hope that two years from now at the World Urban Forum, we'll be able to report to you breakthrough results on those which were done in real multi level fashion.
Finally, I do hope that all of you can be at the forum of mayors, which in our view is a great platform to test multilevel governance approaches to sustainable development, focused on housing, infrastructure, and many other issues that it will have to be mayors who solve.
While governments, of course, continue to play their important policymaking role, UN, including UNC stands ready to support this process going forward.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
A big thank you and round of applause to the speakers, please and to the interpreters.
Thank you very much and have a good afternoon.