Dr. Estela Rivas has taught the course on “The taxation of real estate transactions” on 15, 22 and 29 November 2018 in Barcelona. The course was organised by the Provincial Council of Barcelona so as to train professionals from local administrations who are working on the provision of local housing services.
Dr. Héctor Simón attended the annual meeting of the “Abusive Lending Practices” Project on November 22 and 23 2018, which is coordinated by Open Society Foundations. The convening took place in the city of Lisbon. This project combines strategic litigation, advocacy, empirical research, and legal empowerment to ensure that states protect the human rights of borrowers in possession cases.
On 23th November, Prof.Dr. Sergio Nasarre and the predoctoral researcher Gemma Caballé attended the 8th Conference of lawyers of the General Council of Real Estate Agents Bar (COAPI) that was held in Madrid. The researchers of the Chair were invited to explain the new challenges of the housing sector from a European perspective, as well as the new challenges of the profession of real estate brokerage in Spain.
On 22th November 2018, the PhD student of the chair Gemma Caballé, who is doing her PhD about the new challenges of the real estate agents’ profession, attended the CRS course (Council of Residential Specialists) organized by the Tarragona Real Estate Agents Bar (Colegio de Agentes de la Propiedad Inmobiliaria de Tarragona). This course was delivered by Mr. Leopold Roca, member of CRS Spain. He explained the best techniques and practices so that estate agents can offer better services to the buyer and the seller of a home.
On 20th November 2018, a graduation ceremony for the new PhDs (class 2017/2018) was held at the University Rovira i Virgili. Dr. Elga Molina and Dr. Rosa M. Garcia, both researchers from the UNESCO Housing Chair, graduated this year, and defended respectively the following PhD thesis: “Una nueva regulación para los arrendamientos de vivienda en un contexto europeo” [A new legal framework for tenancies for residential purposes in a European context] and “La sustitución de la renta por la rehabilitación o reforma la vivienda en los arrendamientos urbanos” [Renovations in lieu of rent in urban leases]. Both dissertations were supervised by Prof. Dr. Sergio Nasarre.
On November 16th, the opening session of the technical table was held at the headquarters of the Department of Labor, Social Affairs and Families to achieve the adaptation of the Catalan legal system to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability approved by the Organization of the United Nations, on December 13, 2006, ratified by Spain and the European Union.
One of the researchers of the Housing Chair, Andrés Labella, has joined the work team, proposed at the request of the entities Cocemfe Catalunya and Dincat, with the aim of focusing on private law, especially on issues related to the right to independent life and in the community included in article 19 of the Convention and on all aspects related to housing and protection measures, both personal and physical.
In this sense, the main goal will be to offer proposals so that the new ordinance suppresses the outdated terminology and modifies the articles that cause discrimination. As regards the material content of the right to independent life, the implementation into the new civil legislation of the basic elements for the configuration of community environments as a support network so as to fight against social isolation and to boost balance of family life and work, from a gender perspective and sustainability of cities and communities, will be proposed.
The UNESCO Housing Chair has been accepted as a new associated academic partner of the European Federation for Living (EFL), thus becoming the first Spanish member. The EFL has currently 60 members, which represent 14 European countries and more than 1.2 million housing in Europe. This network has a unique combination ofsocial housing providers, private stakeholders and universities and other research networks.
Thanks to its composition, the EFL is an active and dynamic network. Projects are developed in order to give options and solutions to the needs identified by the stakeholders of the sector (e.g. Circular Housing Asset and Renovation Management, Housing Association strategic alliances and mergers and post-merger Integration and IT Solutions for independent living). It also has different Topic Groups that meet periodically to share expertise and best practices about certain topics, for example, onsocial domain, energy efficient buildings, digitalisation, accessible and intergenerational living and financing and investments. Furthermore, conferences, seminars and workshops are organised throughout the year, where ideas, needs, knowledge, expertise and research outputs are shared.
Therefore, the UNESCO Housing Chair will be able to enrich its work at the same time that it contributes to the EFL with its knowledge and research outputs on a variety of fields within housing studies. Moreover, the combination of housing providers, private companies and academia enables the implementation of two of the Housing Chair cornerstones: knowledge transfer and social impact.
More information about the European Federation for Living in https://www.ef-l.eu
Dr. Héctor Simón attended the First Meeting of the Leonardo Network, which brings together those researchers from the different scientific areas who have been awarded a Leonardo grant in the last five years. Dr. Simón was awarded a grant in 2015 to study “The improvement of the reverse mortgage from the European and North American perspective”. The constitution of this network, at the initiative of the BBVA Foundation, aims to give visibility to the research undertaken by the researchers. More information is available on the website https://www.redleonardo.es.
The Institute of Socio-Economic Research of Luxembourg (LISER) has organized on November 12 and 13 the 3rd Affordable Housing Forum that was first organised in Switzerland. On this occasion, the inaugural conference was presented by Dr. Nasarre and dealt with the search for new forms of housing tenure or reformulation of current ones to avoid households’ over-indebtedness and its consequences. Self-construction, collaborative economy and social housing have been topics discussed in the Forum. The forum has had participants and presentations from eleven countries.
