Action on Affordable and Adequate Housing:
Architecture professionals, urban planners, sociologists, urban anthropologists, economists and academics, representatives of national, subnational and local governments, civil society organizations, intergovernmental organizations, as well as experts on housing issues, gathered at the Forum of the International Union of Architects Affordable Housing Activation: Removing barriers in Madrid, Spain, from 18 to 20 May 2022, we call for action to assume shared responsibilities for the improvement of the effective right of access to decent, adequate and affordable housing around the world by 2050.
It is time to collaborate to overcome the barriers to access to affordable housing, promoting a global movement based on shared commitments and on the knowledge and experience accumulated to establish an activation framework and make a determined commitment to new data that allow us to understand and confront the causes, not just the effect.
We understand this call as alive, but at the same time constant, with a medium-long term, organic, and inclusive action plan, which brings together action commitments and focuses on the implementation and results of multiple stakeholders to promote sustainable urban development. It is time to act, to connect diverse experiences, policies, data, and perspectives through a global, transversal, interdisciplinary, multilevel, flexible, and participatory space.
Therefore, the Madrid UIA Affordable Housing Activation Forum consolidates its legacy to permanently establish the Affordable Housing Activation Platform (affordablehousingactivation.org). The Platform constitutes a space open to contributions and commitments that join efforts to improve access to housing. Leaving no one or no place behind.
• Knowing that, globally, around 55 per cent of the world’s population lives in urban settlements and that this proportion is projected to increase significantly by 2030, with an additional 1.6 billion people living in urban areas.
• Recognizing that the right to housing, as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, is established in various international human rights instruments.
• Affirming that the right to adequate housing is not the same as the right to property, but is broader since it contemplates rights not linked to property and aims to ensure that all people have a safe place to live in peace and dignity, through the different forms of security of tenure.
• Anticipating that unprecedented population growth and urbanization put pressure on the housing market, as rising demand often outstrips new home construction. It is very likely that the demand for housing, particularly in urban areas, will increase even more due to sociodemographic transition processes, changes in family dynamics and structures, or increased migration flows due to climate change.
• Affirming that the right to adequate housing is not only a programmatic goal to be achieved in the medium term, and that it is necessary to put without delay all efforts and take all possible measures, within available resources, to start practicing this right.
• That the right to housing contributes to many other economic, social, and cultural aspects of the development of individuals, households, and communities. Inadequate housing has a negative impact on urban equity and inclusion, urban safety, and livelihood opportunities, and has negative repercussions on health.
• The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, approved in 2015 by the United Nations, proposes in Goal 11 – Sustainable Cities and Communities includes goal 11.1: “Ensure by 2030 the access of all people to housing and basic services adequate, safe and affordable (…)”.
• That the achievement of the many other Sustainable Development Goals is directly related to people’s access to adequate housing. For example, Goal 1 (target 1.5: “Build the resilience of the poor and those in vulnerable situations and reduce their exposure and vulnerability to climate-related extreme events and other economic, social and environmental crises and disasters”), Goal 6 (target 6.2: “Achieve equitable access to adequate sanitation and hygiene services (…)”), Goal 7 (target 7.1: “Ensure universal access to affordable, reliable and modern”), among others.