Urban October 2021: A hot month to rethink the future of the neighborhoods, towns and cities we want

The ESCR Observatory and its Housing Area are preparing to organize and participate in many activities related to the right to housing, the right to the city and sustainable development during the month of Urban October 2021 which, every year, promotes UN-Habitat and the United Nations globally but that, as always, social movements, civil society organizations and entities such as the DESC Observatory resignify to make us our own and take the opportunity to claim, now more than ever, the right to housing and the right to the city, of all and for all, here and around the world

First of all, this Urban October 2021, the Technical Team of the DESC Observatory has decided to stop and reflect and rethink - in the most leisurely way that routine and current affairs allow - how we imagine the neighborhoods, the villages, the communities, and cities of the future and reclaim us from the struggle for the Right to Housing and the Right to the City. Therefore, we present a conversation between the Spokeswoman of the PAH Barcelona and Coordinator of the project "Right to housing and energy: collective empowerment and social legal advice", Lucía Delgado, and the Director of the DESC Observatory, Irene Escorihuela, in which they reflect on the issues that will occupy us this October. The new state "Ley de Vivienda", recently registered in the Congress of Deputies; the new law on social rent and stop evictions that we are processing in the Parliament of Catalonia, the moratorium on evictions that ends on October 31, the referendum that has just been approved by Berlin to expropriate real estate companies that accumulate more than 3,000 apartments, and the housing investment opportunities from Next Generation funds, among others.

Secondly, this Urban October 2021, the DESC Observatory joins the mobilizations at a local and global level to vindicate social rights such as housing and the right to the city and make them a reality. We will be present at various cycles of conferences, seminars, and debates that are included in the Agenda, below.

Thirdly, we also take the opportunity to share, again, the last two publications of the Housing Area that offer advice and resources for people facing housing problems such as evictions, housing harassment, energy poverty, abusive rents, discrimination of gender, among others. We also share a guide for municipalities with public policies that can be promoted to deal with this series of housing problems, in general, which prevents us, today, to really guarantee social rights, such as the right to housing and the right to the city.

Multimedia