Social Production of Habitat Platform: Promoting Successful Supportive Policies to Communityled Habitat around the World

Despite their potential in providing solutions for affordable housing and contributing to sustainable urban development, community-led housing often lacks sufficient attention and supportive policy mechanisms. The solutions developed by local communities – organizing, putting resources in common, planning, financing, building and managing projects while conserving ownership over the decision making processes – rely on supportive public policies that share similarities across developing and developed countries. Paragraph 103 of the New Urban Agenda (July 28) states: “We will encourage developing policies, tools, mechanisms, and financing models that promote access to a wide range of affordable, sustainable housing options including rental and other tenure options, as well as cooperative solutions such as co-housing, community land trust, and other forms of collective tenure, that would address the evolving needs of persons and communities, in order to improve the supply of housing, especially for low-income groups and to prevent segregation and arbitrary forced evictions and displacements, guaranteeing the provision of dignified and adequate re-allocation. This will include support to incremental housing and self-build schemes, with special attention to slums and informal settlements upgrading programs.” Supportive policies towards community-led housing and infrastructure approaches are in fact essential for the implementation of the New Urban Agenda; particularly those related to the ‘access to land’, ‘sustainable and affordable finance’ and ‘technical support’. Correspondingly, the ‘Social Production of Habitat’ Platform promotes public policies addressing these topics, and illustrate the latter through successful projects presented by community leaders. In the following, regional network representatives will expose key policies that forged successful partnerships between national and local governments and local communities. The Platform was launched in 2014 with the aim to advocate for supportive policies enabling community-led initiatives, to raise public awareness on the positive impact of community-led habitat solutions, enhance experience exchange, and connect local communities.