2023 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

17th Edition

Phase 6 of 7

Publication Preparation 18/09/2023 - 06/11/2023

Process phases

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Euskadi: Social Pact for Housing 2022-2036

Official proposal

23/05/2023 12:05

The Social Pact for Housing in the Basque Country is social innovation in public housing policies. It is a great exercise in consultation and collaboration that goes beyond the signing of a strategic document on the goals to be achieved in terms of housing in the Basque Country by 2036. It represents a new way of implementing a consensual and coherent housing policy with a long-term horizon based on the active involvement and collaboration of all agents.

The central objective of the Pact is to accelerate the shaping of the right to housing as an effective right, understanding that access to decent and affordable housing represents one of the fundamental elements of sustainable human development to which Euskadi is fully committed, as stipulated in its 2015 Housing Law.

The Pact was signed on November 30, 2022 by a total of 90 institutional, economic, social and knowledge agents, and has been the result of a participatory process led from the Department of Housing of the Basque Government, which has understood that, only with the commitment of all housing actors and agents, it is possible to achieve social welfare and decent housing objectives for Basque society.

It includes 3 major quantitative goals to be achieved by 2036, with intermediate goals for 2026 and 2031, and 6 strategic lines and 25 priority guidelines for action.

This participatory experience is a deepening of previous consultation processes of citizen and social participation, but with the great differential element that involves the conception of this strategy outside the political legislatures and ideologies and conceived as a long-term multi-agent and multi-level project that will inherit synergies over time.

Therefore, we can affirm that the role of the Covenant's signatory agents is a renewed one. They have gone from being participants to co-responsible for a great project with commitments acquired by all of them, which will be evaluated and their implementations will be made public.

A historic agreement has been reached not only on the prior diagnosis of the situation, but also on the fundamental objectives and actions to achieve them. The positions, currents and experiences of each agent have clearly been surpassed in order to achieve something much higher, which is the common good. That which is shared and beneficial to all.

As a result of the process, the Pact marks the creation of a stable space for multi-agent participation (Basque Housing Forum) that will serve as a joint working space to develop the Pact. In addition, the Forum represents a further step forward in the commitment to participatory planning and evaluation of housing policies, programs and services in the Basque Country, with the support of the Basque Housing Observatory, which will be responsible for ensuring its implementation, monitoring and evaluation of its impact on Basque society.