Collboni calls for more European funds for cities to tackle housing

The mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, advocates for municipalities to directly access the European budget to promote affordable housing. He made this statement during the first edition of the Housing World Summit, part of the Smart City Expo World Congress.

The mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, demanded on Wednesday that local governments be able to directly access more resources from the European budget to develop affordable housing policies. He made this request during the first edition of the Housing World Summit (HOWS), which is being held from November 3 to 5 as part of the Smart City Expo World Congress.

Collboni participated in the roundtable discussion “Right to Stay: How are mayors responding to the global housing crisis?” alongside municipal representatives from Milán, Dublin, Toronto, and Santiago de Chile. Prior to this, he had a closed-door meeting with representatives from 16 cities.

The Barcelona mayor highlighted the Mayors for Housing initiative, driven by several European capitals, as a way to bring municipal demands to the forefront of community policies. According to Collboni, housing has become part of the responsibilities of the European Commission, which presented the Affordable Housing Act in September.

This proposal is still under review in the European Parliament and the Council. Its aim is to provide more legal security to administrations that wish to act in areas with high residential pressure. Collboni believes that access to housing is one of the major sources of inequality today and calls for increased coordination between cities beyond Europe.

During the debate, the mayor of Milán, Giuseppe Sala, questioned whether the market could solve the residential problems of large cities on its own and advocated for combining growth with regulation and protection of available land. The councillor from Toronto, Alejandra Bravo, focused on defending tenants against evictions and acting against landlords who fail to meet their obligations.

From Dublin, Daryl Barron defended the recovery of urban centres as residential spaces. The governor of the metropolitan area of Santiago de Chile, Claudio Orrego, suggested reviewing urban densities while simultaneously strengthening transport and public facilities.

For the Barcelona reader, the HOWS is a space that brings together for three days administrations, experts, the private sector, and social entities to discuss affordable housing, regulation, financing, construction, and urban regeneration. During the first day, the City Council presented a new housing guide aimed at the youth of Barcelona, which explains how the market works and the rights and duties related to access to housing.