Restoring Dignity: Adequate Housing for All | Goals Lounge

Good morning, everybody.
You're all very welcome here in the room and online to the Golds Lounge.
My name is John Gilroy, I'm the Chief of Service at the UN Office for Partnerships.
One of our many tasks and responsibilities is being the gateway between the UN system inside and the wider world outside.
One of our really important tools or ways of doing this is this place we are right now.
It's designed to foster different kind of conversations, getting interaction, get engagement, and come up with new ideas, get people to spark off each other.
That's what brings us here today.
I'd just like to say a big warm word of appreciation to our great partners at UN Habitat, Tony Shea and the New York team, and everybody who's here with us from Nairobi as well.
Always wonderful to work with you all.
I will leave the contextualization to our wonderful moderator, Edelm Yamu, who's the Knowledge and Innovation Program Director at UN Habitat.
Without further ado, over to you.
Here we go.
Good morning, everyone.
Thank you for joining us today, and it's my distinct honor to be your moderator for our conversation.
I'm from UN Habitat, and I'm leading the knowledge and innovation work of the organization globally.
We are here today to discuss dignity, human dignity.
To live a dignified life is an aspiration for every human being.
We all want to live in safety, in privacy.
We want to live without shame.
We want to live without fear.
We want to have security.
Yet, today, this is out of reach for billions of people because dignity starts at home.
In our world today, 3.4 billion people lack a place to call home, which is adequate.
Over 1 billion people live in formal settlements and slums.
Over 300 million people face homelessness.
This is the global housing crisis.
This is not someone else's problem.
This is a problem that affects our communities, our cities, our lives, our families, our friends without exception.
This is a crisis for all of humanity.
We're here today to discuss and have a conversation what does it take to restore human dignity by ensuring that everyone everywhere has a dignified place to call home.
Our focus today is to answer this question, and we are honored and privileged to have distinguished global leaders and global actors who have been advocating for this agenda globally.
We're going to start our conversation today with an exceptional leader, Elizabeth Byrd.
You're welcome.
Is an activist And a housing advocate, a founding member of the leadership collective of Unlock New York City.
She works with New Yorkers every day.
She has dedicated her time and her purpose to ensuring that access to housing is a reality for all New Yorkers.
So we're really privileged to have Elizabeth here with us.
Elizabeth will be sharing with us a testimonial of how housing actually shapes dignity in real life on the ground.
Elizabeth will draw on her lived experiences, her work in the community, and what she has actually seen on the ground.
Elizabeth, you're really welcome.
Thank you for having me here.
I'm privileged to have you here with us.
It's over to you, Elizabeth.
Good morning all.
My name is Elizabeth Bird.
I'm a single mom of three boys, three girls.
Having kids is a full time job.
Getting house was a full time day job.
My kids growing up were very appreciative.
Why? The shelter was home.
Wherever mom was is home.
I personally felt living in a shelter, I was in a prison with curfews, rules, inspections, informing you that you are not allowed a microwave nor an AC in your unit.
Simple day to day appliances to make living easier were not allowed.
And in some shelters to this present day, it's still not allowed.
You have to fight to get those appliances in your unit.
I feel like the biggest thing that affected my family and I, you're not allowed no visitors in your unit.
So for five years, the kids and I endured this.
Case workers held me hostage by giving me wrong information.
I had Section eight when I went in.
They said, you no longer have Section eight because now you're in the shelter.
And I believe them because who else is giving me the education? Who else is giving me the knowledge? No one.
Years later, I would find out we could have gotten an apartment sooner if I had knowledge, education, maybe an organization informing me, like, they're deceiving you.
We will help you find a way out.
I asked myself, after two years in shelter, how can I find a way to get my family housed? Three years later, after being bullied by staff, threatening me to take away my kids because I didn't find adequate housing, with also no help from the city because this was Bloomberg era and he was not giving anyone a housing voucher.
So I felt like I was literally stuck.
And I want to say maybe two years of bullying, letting me know they will call childcare Protective Services because you haven't found adequate housing.
So I deliberated and I'm like, let me see what's out there.
I found a studio.
Yes, with six kids.
But I was so done with the shelter.
I was enrolling my kids in charter school, so everything was new.
And I just couldn't process living there anymore.
How is I going to pay the rent? I'm going to figure that out too after I move.
So being in the studio in a year, I realized doing a lot of research, talking to different organizations, I can find a way out.
Just stop paying rent.
So I did.
I had my landlord take me to court, and because I have children, I got a housing voucher through the court system.
And I was like, totally ecstatic.
The neighborhood was quiet, was different.
I never took my kids to a neighborhood park.
Just because I really didn't want them to see needles and other stuff in the park.
But for some reason, this neighborhood in Brooklyn was different.
I personally went to the park, checked it out.
I was like, Okay.
The neighborhoods different.
The park is different.
So when I told the kids after moving into the two bedroom apartment, we're going to the park.
They all looked at me like, Are you sure? Because we normally just go to the Manhattan parks.
You never take us to the neighborhood parks.
And I'm like, trust me, you'll love it.
And they did.
I feel like the biggest moments was just to have friends over.
The simpler things that people tend to look over we had in the unit.
We had an AC to keep us cool.
We had the microwave we needed.
Because when you have kids you need that microwave.
It's just the simple things in life we needed.
But why did I have to be creative to figure out everything by myself? The system failed us, but I couldn't fail my children.
The future, honestly, were in my hands, and I'm happy to say I have four kids, four of the oldest kids in college, either getting ready to graduate or get their master's or going in and just two more to go.
But I'm getting there.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Wow.
Thank you, Elizabeth, for being so generous in sharing with us your journey and really giving us a sense of how housing runs through all aspects of our lives and the lives of every generation, including your children's.
Thank you for that.
I'm going to move us on to the next segment of our conversation today.
We have a fantastic group of global leaders who will be joining us in this conversation and sharing with us their stories of hope, change, action on adequate housing.
You're welcome.
My privilege to welcome miss Anna Claudia Rosbck, Executive Director of UN Habitat, a leading global advocate calling for action on global housing crisis.
My pleasure also to welcome Shirley Price, Order of Distinction Order of Jamaica, who has dedicated her entire life to change the circumstances of domestic workers in Jamaica, in the Caribbean, and globally.
We are honored to have you.
Also welcoming Maryam, a global advocate for reimagining positive media narratives, which we all need a lot more of, and a youth activist who has been playing a role in the UN and globally in advocating for positive media, climate change, and youth activism.
It's really my honor to welcome you all.
Okay, let's get our conversation started.
Um How does the lack of adequate housing lead to a loss of human dignity? Paint a picture for us based on your work, the communities that you work with, your line of work, and the global advocacy that each of you has been doing on this agenda.
Let me start with you, Ana Claudia.
Thank you.
Thanks so much, Adn.
Good morning, everyone.
It's always a pleasure to be here at the SDG Lounge and have this informal but very much interesting conversations.
I think Elizabeth in her statement, she said it all and this is an illustration of how life goes for perhaps almost 3 billion people living inadequate housing in this world, and then 1 billion living informal settlements and 300 million living on the streets.
They are all facing situations that are similar to yours.
You also related to other aspects of SDG 11 and I was taking notes.
You mentioned, for example, you never took your kids to a park.
This is another indicator, public space, right? And this is one of the indicators that according to our report that we launched just yesterday, is not looking good.
I mean, actually, large part of the population, they don't have a public space or a park to go, but this is an intrinsic, a part of a dignified life.
But perhaps what I wanted to highlight, Ed I don't have a personal statement to do, but throughout my life, I met so many women and one case that I was thinking that really marked my life was the case of a woman living in the north of Brazil in the Amazon area.
And this woman got a house, and I see the Ministry of Cities is here, from a large scale program called My House My Life in Brazil.
This woman got this house.
It was back.
I met this woman actually just before Habitat three, when actually we were discussing the new urban agenda and Habitat three and so on.
And this woman in this conversation, was debating with professionals and others discussing the Brazilian report to the New Urban Agenda.
And some critics were saying, Look, but this program generates houses that are not so nice, they are ugly, they are not so good located, and so on.
Then the woman, she stood up and she spoke so loud, so fiercely and she said, You have no idea how my life was before this house.
This house that looks ugly to you, For me, changed my life because before that, I had to spend my days carrying water.
I didn't have water.
Because I had to spend my days carrying water, it impacted my body.
Now I'm facing health challenges for life because of that.
My kids couldn't go to school because they had to come with me and carry water.
Today, we have water coming out of the top.
I have free time, I can work.
My kids can go to school.
They come back home, they have a safe place to have a safe meal and to do their homework and they can stay at school.
Um, so for women, you know, there are so many aspects that are invisible and that we don't see.
And this is why I think it's very important that, you know, we amplify the perspectives when we look ahead, right, the challenges of SDG 11 and ahead the next ten years of the new urban agenda.
And I'm so glad that yesterday we spoke a lot about co creation.
And I was also struck by the fact that Elizabeth didn't have the basic knowledge to co create.
And this is a major gap that we have to overcome.
Thank you, Anna Claudia, for sharing that with us and how housing clearly can change lives and in particular, how profoundly important it is for women across our communities.
Shirley would love to hear from you.
Thank you.
Good morning, everyone.
I was in sometimes so fundamental that no person should have to fight for it.
Housing is listed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25.
It says, every person has the right to a standard of living adequate for health, well being, and that include housing.
That mean housing is not a favor, is not charity, it's our right.
We should not be fighting for housing.
It should be given to us because it's our right.
However, many of grassroots women, domestic worker who live in formal communities don't have that right.
Home is supposed to be the place where you rest, where you care for your family.
But too often, home is another source of stress.
Don't worry when you go to work and come back.
Don't worry to pay the rent.
I'm speaking from experience.
I'm speaking for where I worked for 20 years as a social development officer working in the slum with communities.
So I know where they live and I was there, so I can speak and share my experiences as such.
So when you go to work and come in, it is so stressful because where you're coming to, you know, cause so much stress, to worry whether the rent can be paid.
You worry about eviction because even though you're working, you don't have the money to pay the rent because it's so small, is minimum wage most times.
When the rain fall, you have to be wondering, what is happening at all? I'm not sure.
You have to take different pans, different containers, even before you go to work.
Rain not falling yet, no.
Would you say the pans then because you have to leave to go to work and you don't know what will happen when you are out there, may fall and then it upset your catchment containers.
This is the life of some of us.
The children are not safe because there is no light, there's no electricity, there is zinc fence and it's just a threat for horse that lives in the inner city.
You have to spend so much time carrying water for your daily needs.
You come from work in the night, and then you have to find work hours to get water to come back to look after your children or to do your daily chores because water is life.
So sometimes where you live is just a safety trap because women are rape, they are, you know, prone to violence because they have to walk and so forth far to get water.
So it's, you know, it's not safe.
However, some of them are forced to even choose between paying rent and to eat food.
You know, so for me, Don't having an oath.
It's like you stop living.
You're just surviving.
When home can't give safety, you cannot give rest, it cannot give control, you cannot feel comfortable is dignity that leaks out.
Thank you.
Thank you, Shirley.
Without a dignified house, you stop living.
I think that's really possible.
Surviving.
Just surviving.
Yeah.
We'll come back to that.
We'd love to hear from you now, Miriam, on your experiences on this in terms of housing and what it means for dignity.
Thank you.
Thank you, Adlan.
One thing that I want to bring in firstly is that how humbled I am to be here on this panel today, listening to all these stories that in my community, I'm not familiar with all of them.
And it's also a pleasure to have the opportunity to share with you some of the stories from my region and get inspired by your stories to share more and more even.
So to begin with, I founded a company back home.
I'm Egyptian.
It's called the Good News.
It started during COVID and the whole point was to share with people the positive side of what was happening during the pandemic.
And when speaking of dignity, I remember the very first story I published on the Good News.
I was studying journalism at the time, and I kept scrolling through my feed.
I made it a challenge to myself that I need to find one piece of good news.
I need something to keep me alive.
I need something to keep my community hopeful.
The story I found was from northern Syria.
Back in 2020, so many people were living in refugee camps in an area called Idlib.
What happened is after COVID started spreading, it became unsafe for them to live in the refugee camps.
Their homes even though they were demolished, but they were safer for them.
We saw videos of refugees coming back to their homes, cheering, singing very happily, very joyfully.
Upon seeing that video, one thing sparked in my mind, which is, how do we define home? Because if they were in a refugee camp and they were technically safer from a medical perspective, but that wasn't safe enough for them from an emotional perspective and they needed to go back to their homes, even if that means rubble, then we need to question ourselves, what is a home? What is a house? Then we can start solving from there by setting the proper definitions.
Second story I'm going to share is from a young woman called Nour.
She's Palestinian.
She's my age, I'm 27 by the way.
It took her four years to finish only her final year of graduation.
She was supposed to have her law degree four years earlier, but due to war, she was not able to.
She was living in a refugee camp and she was a lawyer technically.
What she did differently is that she took some pens and a blackboard and she kept moving from refugee camp to refugee camp, educating little kids because also their schools were bombed and they were halted from having a proper educational system, which was accessible only a few months prior to the war.
Again, seeing that it reignited something in me, which is we're not only speaking about homes, we're also speaking about the community and what kind of cities are we shaping and the urban development of these cities.
What happens when some member states try to actively demolish these structures and how young people are resilient in ensuring that these systems survive even though there are force filled powers that are stronger than them.
The final story I'm going to share is from myself, which I was inspired to share when I heard Elizabeth's story.
I'm always inspired by moms and my mom is a very resilient mom.
I'd like to remind you of the stories we shared.
We spoke of peace and security in SDG 16, the first story.
We spoke about SDG four, education, the second story, and the third story is actually SDG five gender equality.
I am a daughter of divorce and due to the divorce, my mom was not able to secure for us a safe home and due to the law enforcement and the laws that we have in our countries, mom was not able to secure for us a safe home and she struggled as so many women and so many moms struggled to find a shelter for their kids.
This is also a third definition of home because for me, home is just my mom.
I think we need to secure and to be empathetic enough to understand what home means to each and every single person.
No generalize what home means based on our own definitions, we need to extend our lenses.
To be able to solve the problem, we need to understand all the perspectives that come with it.
I think that answers your question about how do we get to dignified housing is that to understand the different definitions that come with housing.
Thank you.
Very powerful in sharing with us the perspective that a dignified place to call home means different things to each of us.
But in the end, it does define our own sense of dignity and also sharing with us a sense of hope, of change, resilience, particularly with youth being active in that regard.
And it takes us to my next question, which is closely linked to this.
And can you share with us stories of hope, of change, of resilience, of what you have seen working in your line of work, in your communities, in your activism and global leadership.
For decades, we would like to understand how can we drive change meaningfully for adequate housing to ensure and restore human dignity.
Let me start with you Ana Claudia.
Thank you, Adam.
I think there is another interesting story.
This is a little bit more bottom up, but it shows us the power of, you know, organization and Elizabeth referred to that.
She only found answers when she started reaching out to organizations, and the power of organizing ourselves um, and then really influencing public policy.
So for a time of my life, I worked for I actually founded a Angio, and I was working with communities and this one community close to the place I come from in San Paolo, I was working with.
They were occupying this land because they had no place to go and this community was living in shacks.
They were all living in shacks, really, really simple shacks.
And what happened is that the mayor would come every week, second week and demolish all the houses and evict them, they would come back, rebuild the shelters.
This is a recurrent story.
So here spoke about evictions.
I think you Sherley spoke about evictions.
This is a daily life or weekly life for many, many families and they were not able to put their kids on school because if A, they need an address and B, When they finally got to put their kids on school, one specific family, the kids didn't like to stay at school because they said, I live in Islam and they were discriminated at the school.
They faced many challenges, the whole community, but this specific family, they started to organize themselves and to understand where they were and try to reach out to other organizations and so on.
This is where I met them.
And we kind of helped them to connect to the information.
So what happened is that they have been able to them, interact with the mayor who was interacting with the national government and they leverage the resources that they need to upgrade the space.
So they upgraded the whole area.
They built houses, high rise, medium density.
So they moved from shacks to apartments, decent apartments.
So today, the family still live there in the same area, so they have the right to stay there.
They received the the titles after so many years, they received the titles.
The property was private, but the city ended up buying the property, gave the titles, improved the area.
Now these kids that were not able to go to school, they all college.
The two of them got married and left the house.
They have their own houses because today they are able to access houses.
Their lives transformed completely.
Amazing, I think.
The power of self organizing and connecting to the right information, the right knowledge, and the right people to move one's life forward.
Thank you for sharing that with us, Santa Claudia.
Shirley.
Yes, how adequate Oz in to restore human dignity, anchors access to basic service.
Affordability, financial and O in tenor.
Security, a sense of pride.
When you have a home or a house, you are being able to organize in your community better because your mind is at ease.
You have a place you can go to to organize, to make sure that not just your family, but other families are being taken care of.
Also, to be a safe space, community centers, schools, green area because building out in a four wall is building a community.
So you need space for children to have homework.
You need space for senior citizens to go to the center so you can go and feel like you're alive.
You need parenting class, you need parenting, it's so much.
You know, it's not just four walls.
So it is holistically, you know, to take care of housing, shelter, parents, child, together.
All right.
Dignity is about closing your front door at night and know your family is safe.
It's knowing your children have a quiet place to sleep.
It's not having to choose between paying rent, as I said before, and food.
It's having an address to go to.
I'm sure you guys know, but many persons that lives in the informal communities cannot go out there and do an interview and give their right address.
They have to give a wrong address because once you put where you're from, you will deny that job opportunity.
So, you know, we need good housing so you can nify housing then.
Digny housing is the word, and so you can have employment opportunity.
But the gap can be closed.
How? With policy, with investment, an organization like WO Commission that work with grassroot women fighting for change.
We need to invest, put some money into the organization so we can help to move communities forward.
We can help to change.
The Jamaica also worker Union is there.
We are here working.
It's already doing voluntary work.
We need government or private sector and everybody to come on board to help us move the organization forward financially so we can help others, right? Build more affordable social oth, so there is secure lan tener, which is legal ownership.
Support programs that I spoke about before and basic service like water and electric, everything is there that's dignify home.
Invest, as I said before, in women and invest in government that works with the community.
Disaster planning before disaster.
You don't wait until when the else Oster blow off come after disaster planning is a must.
So when we close the housing gap, we don't just build orders, we build communities, we restore dignity.
We give people a chance to stand still and to grow and to feel belong because right and negotiable.
It is ours.
We can't negotiate over it like that.
It is due to us.
But most times it's like we have to be fighting to get it, it's not fair.
Hosting is not a privilege, or this is a human right.
Close the gap, restore dignity.
Let us be clear.
We will not accept a world where housing is treated as a privilege.
We will demand policies that build and protect tenants that families stay together.
Because when everyone have a home, everyone have a chance.
No grassroot woman to design with, no adequate housing, no adequate housing, no dignity, no dignity, no sustainable development.
Thank you.
Thank you, Shirley and really sharing with us that change is happening on the ground.
It just requires further commitment and investments and support.
So that's really powerful.
Miriam, what have you seen working? Well, if I would ground the conversation to to a youth level, I think so many things need to be changed on a global scale as we were discussing, policies need to change, funding needs to occur.
So many things that are outside of our control needs to happen.
I think on the day to day, what we own and what we can control right now is three things.
First of all, very actively listening to each other, listening to one another's problems, listening to one another's struggles with housing, listening to one another and empathizing with one another.
Second of all, active speaking.
You cannot expect someone to learn about your crisis without actively speaking about it.
And figuring out what are the possible channels that will make more people educated about the very specific crisis that you personally are facing because prejudice can get in the way, assumptions can get in the way, and you need to make sure that you own your narrative and own your story or someone else will come and tell it on behalf of you.
Third thing, we need to be active actioners.
I don't know if that's a word.
But we need to take action on our grassroot level, as I shared the story of Nour, the young person who went in her community and tried to create a city out of nothing, tried to create an educational system out of a non existing educational system.
Not that we're putting the responsibility on her shoulders or on young people's shoulders, but still taking ownership and taking accountability is part of what makes us alive and without that fire and without that will to change, I don't think change is possible, even though more forceful powers can reject that sentiment.
Hope is what keeps us alive, essentially.
Mm.
Thank you.
Yeah.
I mean, your point around the need to speak up, to speak out.
That's why we're here today for empathy and for action and to really make it clear that when we talk about housing, we're talking about people's lives.
We're talking about what it means to be a human being and what it means to feel that your life is dignified.
So thanks for sharing that with us, Marian.
I want to do a quick final round with each of you and ask, before we open it up to the audience to interact with you, If you wanted the audience to take away one message from you today, what would that be? Ana Claudia.
Well, I think the one message and perhaps I will repeat myself from yesterday, is really the co creation and make sure that all perspectives are there.
When we enter in co creation mode, it's so powerful because you find solutions that one person alone, one entity would never have thought about.
It's much easier to find the way out.
The example that I just shared about the community and get organized.
So if you combine, you know, the existing policies, even if they are limited, but there are policies.
There's always a law, there's always something with the power of communities getting together and organizing, right? It's so strong.
And then you design what can be done, and the results are never, you know, what we expected.
So I would say co creation is fundamental.
Co creation, Shirley.
Me, I would say that dignity is not expensive.
Exclusion is that's what I want to leave here today.
Dignity is not expensive.
Exclusion is a system of design for us, not against us.
Thank you.
Exclusion is expensive.
What an inspiring very expensive.
What a message.
Yes.
We will pay the price.
I feel like so many generations coming, they will be paying the prices of what we do today in rooms like this.
I think the final message I want to leave everyone with these two things.
Open your heart to the person right next to you.
You might never know what their struggles are.
I came here into this room not expecting that I myself faced a housing crisis at some point in my life.
And then when someone else spoke up, I noticed that there's a crack in the system, and maybe I need to be speaking about it more so that more young girls don't have to go through what I went through.
So first of all, speak up.
Listen, sorry.
And then when it comes to speaking up, make sure that you document everything about your life.
Do what you're going through because they make incredible stories.
I come from a country where we were the oldest people to document our stories in temple walls, and these stories and these lineages are what grounds us and what are keeping our civilization going for over 7,000 years.
So just listen very, very well and make sure that you also contribute to the conversation.
Thank you very much.
The power of storytelling to drive action and change.
And I think your point around this being not a distant challenge when we talk about the global housing crisis, it's something that all of us have either experienced are seeing in our families today, in our communities, among our friends.
It's a shared challenge.
And this is the perfect moment to open it up to the audience to, um, Share your thoughts, ask questions, inviting you to express yourselves.
Kindly introduce yourself and who you are, and also help us by being as succinct as possible in your intervention.
We are now opening it up for your interventions.
Please go ahead.
Yeah.
Good morning, everyone.
You hear me? My name is Lana Finnekn.
I'm from Jamaica.
I'm with Ws.
I'm a theater practitioner and organizer, mobilizer everything.
I want to share a story of a group of women that I worked within the New Lands area.
It's a slum area, and we use a safety audit tool to engage those women.
And they use that tool to gather information about the issues that are impacting their community.
And they document it and they take it to the local authority and presented the information that they gleaned from that.
They also ended up signing an MOU with the local authority for them to work with them.
They ended up being on a committee, the planning committee, and a disaster risk management committee.
The thing that they wanted was the street did not have any names.
Why? Because of where it is.
Their problem was because it doesn't have any name, the fire truck, JPS, everybody can't find him.
So if you call the police and say, I'm being raped or I'm being in a domestic violent situation, they don't know where to find him.
So street naming was one thing for them.
They got that done.
The other thing they identified was zinc fence removal to move the fences so they can see inside the yard when they are going home at night, so they are less being traumatic and they are more safer because somebody can see them from behind the fence that are now four feet high.
The next thing they wanted was street light.
So they got street light, they got the naming of the roads, and they got the zinc fence removal.
And the last thing they got was the counselor who take on the responsibility to form a group called Newland Women Safety and Women and Girls Safety and Security, 2009, and they're still operating today.
Man Mason.
Thank you so much.
I'd like to take another intervention.
May I invite ambassador, please to intervene? Thank you very much and good morning.
Thank you so much for your sharing stories and particularly, mother there, we could be with you.
I'm Don Chimbiri-Molande ambassador of Malawi to the United Nations, one of these small countries in Southern Africa.
But one of the co facilitators of a process on political declaration of renewed commitment on new urban agenda.
So really looking at cities, resilient cities.
And what we learned when we were negotiating or consulting member states was that we noted this one denominator, global housing crisis.
Every country was reflecting what is happening in their countries and demanding on what needs to be in that declaration so that the heads of state when they come, they need to commit.
Political will is needed to provide really dignified housing.
And we have heard from the mother, we have heard from all of you how dignity starts from the home.
It starts from the home.
If one has no home has no dignity.
You need to take a shower in a day.
All of us are looking fresh because we have come from a dignified house.
But without a home, so what the call is we need collective action.
Here you have heard her she's speaking for those without the homeless.
We need those who can speak out, bring the voices of the voiceless.
Then therefore, as we will be having this declaration adopted next week, we need more of these voices to make the heads of state realize they need to make commitment, they need to invest.
They need more global cooperation to make this happen.
Thank you very.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
My name is Violet Shibut.
I'm the global Chair for W Commission, and I also organize and work in my community and with other communities at the national level in an informal settlement called Madare.
And for me, I think one of the things that I've seen really promoting dignity in the women living in the informal settlement is when their name appears on the tenancy agreement.
And I'm happy that Madam Ambassador, you're talking about having a home.
Having a home is being assured that the home, if there is any documentation that is showing that this home belongs to so and so your name is also included.
And that begins with land rights.
That has been the biggest problem in issues of informal settlement and dignity.
When the women in Madare during HIV AIDS were women were seeking homes and other women were providing care and issues of women being thrown out of houses every time when they are even sick, when issues of maybe the husband or whoever that has given them this place where they have leased the house.
The name is not included.
The women started to organize through the home based care alliance.
It's in that process that they came into the program that was happening with GLTN called the short Social Dana domain model, where women were involved in remuneration, to understand who lives in this neighborhood, which house belongs to so and so, and make sure that their names were also included in the tenancy and that their rights to land was also respected that women also belong to this, and that is how dignity started being reorganized.
Even claiming the toilets, these toilets belong to so and so, and the women putting their names as managers of the toilets.
We really need to look into issues of land.
How does land in the informal settlements really promote and ensuring dignity.
For the women that are living in these settlement areas.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
I'm inviting you to intervene.
No, just here first and then I'll come to you.
Thank you.
I am the permanent representative of Zimbabwe to the United Nations and I'm also happen to be a friend of the New Urban Agenda.
I'm a co chair of the group of friends of permanent missions ambassadors for the New Urban Agenda.
I must say that I'm really thankful to all the panelists in terms of your very insightful presentations and also quite inspiring.
And I like the framing of the housing crisis as a matter of dignity.
In Zimbabwe, as we were growing up, I must say that when I started work, which is late in the 80s, but please don't take up your calculators.
In the late 80s, mortgages were low.
You just start working for government, you get a government guarantee, you get a mortgage from a bank, all that is dried up and also in terms of affordable housing for the entry points.
The city councils would build housing for the low income families and ODA would also sometimes come in to de risk investment in that.
Now all that, as we know, is dried up.
My thinking now is to say, how do we come up with new instruments for our local authorities, for our governments to begin to invest again in affordable housing, especially the middle class and the others can take care of themselves.
But affordable housing is really my concern.
How do we do that? I think we need to think of that in terms of new instruments.
And I attended one Wolf I think there was in Egypt and This issue is always coming up, how do we get to be investing again in affordable housing? Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I'm going to bring it back to the panel and then maybe we'll have another round.
What are your reactions? We've heard about how housing is a foundation for women and girls safety, the power of collective action, making sure that we're also listening into the voiceless communities, and tenure as a starting point for housing and for dignity and of course, your point around how do we develop new instruments for investing in affordable housing? Your reflections, I'm bringing it back to you, Ana Claudi.
First of all, the report from the ambassador that there is consensus, there is a common denominator that connects us all globally.
It's unfortunate that we have a crisis, but I feel there is a momentum for us also to identify the instruments and the policies and get some consensus on that.
But I believe the ambassador from Zimbabwe mentioned two important aspects.
The role of the local governments, the mayors and I mentioned the mayor, you mentioned the mayor, Elena mentioned the mayor, the MOU with the mayor.
It's so important because the mayor is where the communities can go and knock on the door.
Simple like that.
But then they don't have the resources.
You mentioned the finances.
For me, this is one of the big, big gaps.
How we really make sure that the money that is out there, because there is money out there really gets to where the money is really needed.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Shirley.
That's what I said in my speech, I in community organizing.
That's why I mentioned where that they are in the community because the chin starts there.
It don't start clapping off.
You have to go to the community and to do your needs assessment.
It's not just pushing down things on us.
I'm going to build two of and no, what are the needs? Work with your community leaders, work with your community practitioner.
Miss Pelikin just spoke about working with the mayor and the result that she got light.
That's very successful.
Congratulations, miss Plikin.
Yes.
Because you got lights, you got zinc fans taken away, and that's big.
That's big.
The bottom line is, invest in your community organization because they are the one that is making the change first.
When all of the hurricane common blood out of, we are there.
The long before a politician practitioner comes in, the organization are there, and even when everybody gone, they are still there working, making sure the people are taken care of.
I, invest, invest in grassroots organization.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, I have a remark to share on the affordable housing point raised by ambassador from Zimbabwe, which is in Egypt, we have an ongoing crisis of housing, especially when it comes to young people because the way that the money floods into the country is through gated communities, which are designed to be only for an elite segment of the society, and the money is not flowing back to building actual cities.
Young people that are affordable.
I think the way here is to see how we can incentivize the private sector to invest in cities that are affordable for young people through government relations and through government enforcement because otherwise, there will be no incentives for the private sector to invest in such cities when the cash cow was already there with easy money when it comes to elitist branding or elitist product placement.
I think it's just a matter of alignment between governments and private sector to build more affordable and sustainable housing options.
Thank you so much.
I want to come back to you, Elizabeth.
You've heard the conversation.
You set the scene for us today.
What would be your one message that you would like to leave with the room today? Honestly, speak up.
Speak up.
If you don't speak up, how would we know? How do you get help? How would anyone know there's a crisis or there's not? If we all just said nothing, it would still be silent.
Ed, excuse me.
We had a question from a young person right over there.
Absolutely.
If we have a minute back to you for a quick intervention.
Thank you.
Thank you to all the panelists and hosts for this discussion.
My name is Calvin Santoso.
I'm a youth delegate from Indonesia, and I'm the founder of Invest kids and Initiative, bringing basic financial education to kids, especially in underprivileged communities.
And with rapid urbanization, today's youth will inherit the cities that are being designed right now.
Beyond just treating young people as a demographic that we need to build for, what are some ways to integrate youth leaders and their innovations directly into the urban planning and decision making process.
Thank you.
Would any of you like to react to that question? How do we bring youth into the conversation as drivers of action? Perhaps Mario? I'm curious to know the answer because I'm on that side of the table ing the community.
Starting in the community at home.
It starts in the community.
That's where the youth are in the community.
Yeah, the sub starts.
Ana Claudia.
Of course, we have to start trying to speak their language and reach out to them to start with.
Then Yanktt has a very interesting program around games and so on.
This is one form, the block by block.
Where we work actually with young people building public spaces and parks and spaces like that.
This is one way, using the game language, for example, which is their language.
But you are right.
I think we have to find more ways because we cannot leave a cannot imagine that we are going to live in the future the same way we lived in the past that my sons, their kids and my grandkids and so on will live the same way my grandparents did because we cannot afford.
We are at the edge of the frontier of the land consumption.
So we have to find different ways and what is the cities? What are the ideas and aspirations? We have to find strong channels at all levels at the city level, at the national level, and habitat also to work.
Thank you so much.
What a wonderful conversation we've had today.
Thank you, everyone, applause.
I think we end with a very strong and clear sense that the global housing crisis is a crisis of dignity for humanity that is shared among all of us, that we're experiencing across our communities, across our cities.
The conversation has also made clear to us that change is possible.
Change is happening.
Change is being driven by women in particular, by grassroots organizations.
We need to take that change to scale.
It's also clear to us today that we all have a role to play.
There have been calls for us to speak up, to share, to connect, to co create, and that call is for each and every one of us here today.
Thank you so much for joining us in this conversation.
Our call is that we all go out there and speak up and share and advocate for housing as a foundation for human dignity.
Thank you very much.
That's the message.
Message.