Points of view and contributions

Europe has 60 millions of people living in poverty, between 15 and 18 millions of people are poorly housed or living in slums, 3 millions are homeless and hundreds of millions of evictions take place every year while millions of houses are vacant. Meanwhile, the budgets for housing are steadily diminishing.

The governments of European countries have accelerated the deregulation of the markets and abandoned the policy to protect tenants and low income populations. 

· The tenants are subjected to the law of the markets  (which means deregulation of rents, loss of housing tenure)
· Racial and social discrimination are reinforced and encouraged the formation of urban ghettos, the recreation of towns and the maintenance of slums
· The NGOs without adequate means (both financial and human) find themselves handed over the management of the housing crisis.

These policies contradict the legal obligations contracted by the European states who have all signed the UN Declaration of Social and Economic Rights and other pacts with the European Parliament relative to the right of housing and the construction of a Social Europe.

The resistance to the free market globalizes and capitalism is beginning to bear fruits. (Seattle, Millau)
In numerous countries there are popular organizations which fight evictions, propose the local management of the neighborhood with a human dimension, reappropriate vacant lots or empty houses, self build and rehabilitate housing and fight rent increases.

These resistance movements of inhabitants act at the local or the national level but the consequences of the Europeanization and the globalization of markets of urban space stimulates us to reinforce international mobilization in these domains.

Ten years after the first meeting the European Housing Ministers will meet again in Paris 26th to 28th of September. The HOUSING MOVEMENTS WILL BE THERE ALSO.

It is time that we speak up to demand the right to live decently in all the neighborhoods of the city including the Center City thanks to new policies which the local and central governments should implement.

We will call for a European mobilization in order that the HOUSING ministers on the national and the European level accept to:

- Put the right to housing in the European Charter and make it criteria of consequence.
- Introduce legislation to prevent evictions without satisfactory rehousing and give tenants secure tenure
- Permit access too satisfactry housing for all social categories
- Mobilize the vacant housing for poor households by taxation and requisition
- Develop rental social housing in the urban centers in crisis
- Support innovative experiences of urban management or self-management of the urban inhabitants themselves.

Paris is one step to continue to build a European and Global network of the \urban struggle which will meet in Mexico the 2nd to the 4th of October in the World Assembly of inhabitants and then in New York in May 2001 at the UN Conference "Istanbul +5".
 

Contact :
Germany : Habitat forum Berlin: <teschner@habitat-forum-berlin.ge>
France : DAL <dal@globenet.org> - AITEC : <aitec@globenet.org>
Europe : HIC <pad48@padovanet.it>