Only two weeks after embarking on a new journey - to communicate about the need of affordable, sustainable homes as part of Housing Europe’s team - I hopped on a train to Antwerp together with our Secretary General, Sorcha Edwards and colleague Clara Mafé, responsible for our OurHomesOurDeal initiative to meet our member in Flanders.

Together with the Socialists & Democrats group, co-hosted by MEP Estrella Dura, Housing Europe organised a webinar dedicated to the role of our social, housing and affordable housing providers and the European Parliament in implementing the right to housing in its ever-present urgency. We were joined by Laurent Ghekiere, Chair of the Housing Europe Observatory, AVS Director-General Maria Montes Miguel, Director of FEANTSA Freek Spinnewij and Silvia Ganzerla - Policy Director of EUROCITIES.

While COVID-19 poses a number of potential problems for households and the housing sector in general, “it also offers an opportunity to re-evaluate the policy mistakes which have been made in recent years,” writes Cédric Van Styvendael, President of Housing Europe, the Federation for Public, Cooperative and Social Housing, and Mayor of Villeurbanne in the latest article of Friends of Europe.