Europe is experiencing a serious housing crisis: approximately 82 million households spend more than 40% of their income on housing costs and the number of homeless people continues to rise. In this context, we need a coordinated response, from different countries, to get tools that allow us to advance the right to housing!

That is why with the involvement of more than 77 organizations from 20 European countries the European Citizens' Initiative (ICE) "Housing For All" has just been launched, a call to European countries to prioritize investment in housing and take a step forward in creating affordable housing.

Com funciona?

Although housing is a competence of the member states of the European Union at an individual level, there are European laws such as fiscal or those regulating competition and subsidies that significantly influence housing.

A European Citizens' Initiative enables European citizens to promote specific changes in legislation in the aspects on which the European Commission is authorized to suggest them. We want this ICE to be a turning point and enable achieve better legal and financial conditions, how:

• The non-application of the Maastricht criteria to public investment in social and affordable housing.
• ​Better access to EU funding for non-profit and sustainable housing developers.
• Social rules for short-term rentals based on competition.
• The compilation of statistics on housing needs in Europe.

We have a year from now to get it 1 million signatures across Europe, with a minimum of 40.500 in the Spanish State, and be able to take the request to the European Commission for review.

Housing in the Spanish State

Spain has the tenth of public housing than other countries around it (1,5% compared to an average of 15%) This is not accidental, but is the result of the commitment to an unsustainable model of property and protected housing for sale, which was on the market in after a few years More than 644.000 families have experienced eviction since 2007, in many cases without alternative housing by the public administrations due to the shortage of social housing.

For this reason, this Initiative is defined at the state level with the following priorities:

1. Create a social and affordable housing stock for rent or right of use of 15% in 10 years and 30% in 20 years.

• Incorporate Bankia and SAREB housing into the social housing stock.
• ​Recovery of the €77.000M from the bank bailout, via imposed on financial institutions to allocate it to social and affordable housing.
• Obliging large owners to allocate 30% of new construction or comprehensive renovations to VPO in areas with housing demand.

2. Ensure stable and affordable rent.

• Allow councils to regulate rental prices on the basis of purchasing power.
• ​Automatic renewal of contracts with limited income update except for non-compliance by the tenant/or due to the need for the tenant's housing

3. Prioritize public housing for rent, as well as collaborate and finance social entities, housing cooperatives on assignment

You can read here the full manifesto of the Initiative. 

Sostre Cívic we are part of the group promoting this initiative in the Spanish State, together with 12 other entities, organizations and citizen movements: the PAH, DESC Observatory, Union of Tenants and Tenants, Table of Entities of the Third Social Sector, Mambré Foundation, La Dinamo Foundation, FAVB, CAES, El Rogle cooperative, Habitat 3 Foundation, FRAVM and Syndicato de Inquilinas.

If you are an entity or group, you can join to this European Citizen Initiative in this link!

[THIS CAMPAIGN IS NO LONGER ACTIVE]