4th Meeting of the UfM Working Group on Affordable and Sustainable Housing

15-16 January 2025, Barcelona (Spain). The objective of the 4th Meeting of the UfM Working Group on Affordable and Sustainable Housing, to be held at the UfM Secretariat premises in Barcelona on 15-16 January 2025, is to evaluate progress on housing policies in each Member State, identify challenges, and set standards with a view to advance the formulation of concrete policies.

The working group addresses one priority each year to generate consensus in order to produce agreed recommendations and support the advancement of policies and projects dealing with the discussed topic, in this case cost-efficient construction and industrialisation of housing construction and renovation within UfM Member States.

The working group will be focused on sharing the latest achievements on the Ministerial Declaration call to address the promotion of public policies and programmes to tackle affordable housing in general, with a specific focus on cost-efficient construction and industrialisation of housing construction and renovation within UfM Member States.

Across the region, housing construction levels are not keeping up with increasing demand. Current issues such as fragile supply chains, higher raw material prices and a shortage of skilled labour have a huge impact on construction companies as well as housing providers, making it increasingly difficult to keep producing affordable housing and refurbishing poorly performing buildings to meet ambitious climate targets. At the same time, the construction industry faces a long-standing decline in productivity and a need for innovation.

In order to meet current and future needs, experts highlight the construction industry needs to shift from a classic project approach toward industrialised construction and renovation. This approach (which encompasses different techniques, including prefabricated and modular construction and panelization), means moving from on-site to off-site construction, with serial production of elements that can be assembled together. These innovations have the potential to help save time and costs, increase sustainability, and to make the process more efficient across different housing typologies, from single-family homes to large social housing developments.

Housing providers and local authorities are testing the potential of these technologies. The Barcelona City Council, for instance, has recently completed the construction of four new public housing developments in the Sant Martí district, adopting industrial construction methods that have been allowed to speed up the sites and reduce environmental impact. This project, which amounts to a total of 151 housing units, is part of a broader strategy of the Municipal Institute of Housing and Rehabilitation (IMHAB) to increase the availability of affordable housing in the city. Furthermore, a number of research and innovation projects were funded by the European Union to support and spread the use of industrialised methods to speed up the Renovation Wave.

During the fourth meeting of the Union for the Mediterranean Working Group on Affordable and Sustainable Housing, to be held in Barcelona on 15 and 16 of January, the topic of industrialised construction and renovation will be explored, learning from experiences across the region and from relevant EU projects, and reflect on whether and how governments can support this shift as part of their strategies to achieve more affordable and sustainable housing offer. It will also be an opportunity to learn more about the current state of housing policy in Spain and the challenges and solutions implemented.

Background

At the Second UfM Ministerial Conference on Sustainable Urban Development, held in Cairo on 22 May 2017, UfM Ministers in charge of housing, municipal affairs and urban development adopted the UfM Urban Agenda. In this context, the UfM Thematic Working Group on Affordable and Sustainable Housing was created with the initial mandate to elaborate a set of recommendations in the form of an action plan. To this end, the first and second meetings of the Working Group took place respectively in Brussels (Belgium) on 20-21 September 2018 and in Paris (France) on 28 February and 1 March 2019. The UfM Housing Action Plan was endorsed by UfM Member States during the 3^rd UfM Ministerial Conference on Sustainable Urban Development that took place in Zagreb (Croatia), on 4 May 2023. After the Ministerial Conference, the meetings of the Working Group were resumed on 15-16 May 2024 in Dublin (Ireland).

The aim of the working group is:

Peer-to-peer exchange of national representatives on knowledge of affordable and sustainable housing the identification of gaps

• Policy gaps: legislation, institutional setting, implementation etc.
• Financing gaps: subsidies, capital market environment, international support etc.

Identification of international good practice of affordable housing policies:

• Good practice in affordable land provision.
• Institutional good practice.
• Good practice in cost-efficient construction.
• Good practice in energy-efficient affordable housing.
• Good practice in financing affordable housing.

Development of country-specific activities.

Identification of bankable housing projects:

• Embedded in national housing strategies.
• Conclusive refinancing scheme.
• Social targeting.
• Energy efficiency standards.
• Scalability.