It was in a public bus, that Mariana Mazzucato and Leilani Farha coincidentally took together after attending a meeting, that they found out that their frameworks matched perfectly. Mazzucato is the famous professor Economics of Innovation & Public Value at the University College London, known for her book ‘the Entrepeneurial State’ and ‘Mission Economy’. Farha is the former special UN rapporteur on the right to adequate housing and now global director of ‘the Shift’. They decided to team up, resulting in paper ‘the right to housing: a mission-oriented and human rights-based approach’.
The two women teamed up again for ISHF – International Social Housing Festival 2023 plenary event ‘Emerging housing systems in southern Europe’. Mazzucato as keynote speaker and Farha as moderator of a large panel of practitioners from France, Greece, Italy, Spain an Portugal.
In her keynote Mazzucato outlined that in reaching for the sustainable development goals governments should stop talking and start taking concrete actions. In particular in realising goal 11 ‘Housing for all’, to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. She stated that governments don’t take this seriously enough. Governments’ main concern is continuing the current status quo, policies are meant to fix the system. We should move to an output oriented approach and restructure our economy to reach our goals. This might mean that we need to rethink how the public and the private sector work together. Governments must play a key role to organise this.
Additionally, Farha addressed why the human right to housing should be central. First she summarised the size of the problem of housing by sharing some dazzling figures. At least 1,8 billion people worldwide are homeless or live in inadequate housing, meaning that they have no access to water and electricity. In Berlin in 2023 the level of new rental has risen by 27%. In 21 cities in Italy the rents have risen stronger than inflation. This is the result of the residential tenure is the biggest investment in the world. About USD268 trillion – almost three times the global GPD – is invested in housing. Housing is financialised and Leilani Farha said she remains very committed to advocate for governments to take action.
She shortly outlined how Mazzucato and her think that governments should act by focusing on the mission, promoting public-private partnerships in which public investment exclusively leads to public value, by bringing in communities, as they are the experts. Governments should be convener, not the rulers.
(this article is part of a series of blog articles for the ISHF live blog website, in collaboration with Housing Europe)
#homelessness #socialhousing #affordablehousing #ishf23 #volkshuisvesting
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