Hub for Housing Justice inaugural meeting of the steering group
The Hub for Housing Justice is a collaborative initiative led by a group of civil society and research organisations that aims to advance housing justice by framing agendas, sharing resources, synchronising efforts, and promoting learning and action across different contexts.
In June 2024, members of the hub’s steering group met in London for the first time to agree on the main goals and priority areas of action. The meeting was convened by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), which hosts the core team of the hub’s secretariat. Key allies of the hub joined remotely to provide their inputs to the discussion.
Participants reflected on the need to forefront housing justice in housing policy and practice conversations and present a powerful alternative to exclusionary, extractive and inequitable approaches to housing.
To do so, partners hope to use the hub to create opportunities to foster innovative learning and action by encouraging grassroots-led research, creating spaces for exchange of experiences and solidarity building, and supporting grassroots and civil society organisations to engage at diverse levels of governance, from local levels to international.
The hub will also help bring housing justice into broader discussions on sustainable and equitable development, by showing the pivotal role of housing as a mechanism to deliver other outcomes of justice and sustainability.
Key activities of the hub will include:
Co-designing and framing housing justice agendas
Curating and sharing resources related to housing justice
Synchronising and aligning efforts and voices in a range of different spaces, and
Facilitating opportunities for learning, exchanges, and actions promoted by the hub’s partners, across different contexts and localities.
This work will seek to create new connections across organisations and communities advancing housing justice, identify priority areas of action, and prompt new initiatives or open new spaces to engage under a housing justice lens.
The work of the hub will be led by a group of partner organisations, notably civil society networks and academic institutions, with representatives taking part in the hub’s steering group. This inaugural meeting, held at the Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL, brought together representatives of Slum Dwellers International, the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights, Habitat International Coalition, the Global Platform of the Right to the City, World Habitat, IIED, the Indian Institute of Human Settlements, the Bartlett Development Planning Unit and University of Sheffield.
The workshop also included a visit to Lesnes Estate Occupation in east London, where participants met with members of Housing Rebellion to exchange ideas about their collective housing struggles.
Members of the steering group agreed on key next steps and identified opportunities for joint advocacy, such as the 12th World Urban Forum taking place in Cairo, Egypt, in November 2024.
