The European Affordable Housing Plan: SEFA’s position on the role of renovation and delivery at scale

SEFA welcomes the European Affordable Housing Plan as a timely initiative that answers to European citizens´ concerns and seeks to respond to the challenges. The Plan rightly recognises both the need for new housing supply and the role of renovation in addressing affordability. But we see the need to go further in order to position deep renovation as a core tool to address housing-supply, affordability and neighbourhood transformation, supported by appropriate financing and delivery mechanisms that can be used to scale activity locally.

While the European Affordable Housing Plan addresses a wide range of structural, financial and regulatory dimensions, its impact on the ground will ultimately depend on whether households, municipalities, project promoters and financial institutions are effectively enabled to act. This requires that capacity building, technical assistance and access to finance are designed in a user-oriented and practical way, going beyond high-level frameworks to provide concrete, usable support for those who are working to deliver renovation projects on the ground.

Buildings renovation must be prioritised and operationalised, so it does not get crowded out by a “build more” narrative. This paper sets out SEFA’s feedback on the Plan, including:

• Fundamental principles and core elements that we see as being needed to increase affordable housing supply across Europe,

• Key Plan actions and measures we welcome,

• Recommendations on areas where further specification is needed to address implementation gaps, overcome barriers and ensure effective delivery on the ground.