The first part of The meeting gathered representatives of ACHR’s member organisations from 15 Asian countries (Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam) for four days of internal exchanges and discussions in preparation for the international conference \u201cCollective Housing : let people be the solution !<\/strong>\u201d. This major event was to be held for another 4 days, gathering in a total of more than 150 representatives of civil society organizations, grassroots communities (mainly women community-leaders ! \ud83d\udc9c), local and national governments, international institutions and universities from all over the world, including Africa and Latin America.<\/p>\n This meeting was organised by ACHRS with 10 partners from Thailand and beyond, including urbaMonde, and was hosted by the Thai Ministry of Social Development and Human Security and the Community Organization Development Institute (CODI) at the United Nations Conference Center.<\/p>\n The conference aimed at bringing visibility and fostering experience exchanges on collective housing in the Asian context, while analysing the bottlenecks and exploring possible ways to scale-up these innovative community-led housing initiatives.<\/strong> Collective housing takes many different shapes according to each local context, purpose despite these differences, it shares common principles :<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Insightful discussions allowed the participants to get familiar with solutions implemented in other countries and learn from different models and approaches from community leaders and their support NGOs<\/strong> from all over Asia, Latin America and Africa. Here are two key statements, among others, to emerge from the many workshops and panel discussions :<\/p>\n Field visits to inspiring projects in Bangkok, !<\/strong><\/p>\n We participated in two field visits ; the first was the Bor Farang project in Bangkok<\/strong>, a housing cooperative built with the support of the government on land owned by a private company, who decided to support the community who had settled there.<\/p>\n The second field visit was a collective housing project led by homeless people<\/strong> ; the Baan Phun Suk Homeless Center in a neighbouring province of Bangkok (link to publication<\/a>, p. 5) ;<\/p>\n There are not many examples of community-led housing projects by and for homeless people, who are the most vulnerable and marginalised population among the urban poor. Thailand is showing the way with the Human Settlement Foundation (HSF), created in 1988, who started to work with homeless people in Bangkok in 2001. Along the way, they managed to create a strong city-wide homeless people network, even expanding to other provinces. They plan to establish the national Thailand Homeless Network by the end of 2024 ! Although successful examples are present in a variety of contexts, the conference highlighted that much remains to be done for collective housing to be recognised at a higher level as an effective, sustainable and inclusive solution to respond to the global housing crisis. It is paramount that governments, international cooperation, technical professionals and financial institutions to recognize communities as legitimate actors and the driving force of housing and city making. Building up on the conversations and commitments taken during this event, advocacy strategies for the coming years will be planned collectively by ACHR and carried over in the coming months in its member countries.<\/p>\n For those who missed the conference, you can replay the different sessions on the Facebook page<\/a>. And find more information about collective housing in Asia on this website<\/a>.<\/p>\n You can for example replay :<\/p>\n The discussions and conclusions will also be gathered in a report to be soon published by ACHR. Stay tuned and follow us on urbaMonde’s Facebook<\/a>, Instagram<\/a> & LinkedIn<\/a> page !<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/urbamonde.org\/IMG\/png\/img-20240704-wa0010_2.png\")
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<\/a><\/a>Our key takeaways<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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In collaboration with local civil society actors, they have been providing support to homeless people, such as accessing a national identity card and medical care, developing income generating activities and building capacity and self-confidence of the residents. The self-managed homeless centre, Pathum Thani, thailand – Baan Phun Suk was built in 2020 as a result of the long advocacy work done by HSF and its allies to obtain public support through an adapted policy, which has been accepted in 2016 by the government.
Like the other homeless centers built under this model, the 29 residents are fully participating in the management and decision-making processes, e.g. through participatory design, shared spaces (kitchen, meeting room, etc), monthly meetings, a revolving fund for income generating activities and a healthcare fund. Their stay in this place is temporary, as it is thought as a transitional space allowing them to build capacity and resources to continue on their own at some point. All the spaces have been built based on these principles. During our visit, we got the honour to participate in the official inauguration of the rental rooms they had just finished building right next to their hand housing centre. These rooms are part of this transition process, as they are individual units that residents can rent once they get back on their feet.<\/p>\n<\/a>\n