OECD Focus On Housing: 14-18 June 2021

Access to affordable and decent housing is vital for good health, job opportunities and life satisfaction, while building to high environmental standards and retrofitting existing dwellings is key to reaching climate objectives. The COVID-19 crisis has uncovered how unevenly housing conditions are distributed across population groups and exacerbated the adverse impacts of poor housing conditions.

A wide-ranging OECD Housing Project launched in 2018 has gathered evidence on which reforms have the potential to improve housing policy and ensure that housing markets are efficient, inclusive and sustainable. To support the design and implementation of housing reforms, the OECD is now making available a Housing Policy Toolkit comprising:

• A report, Brick by Brick: Building Better Housing Policies, which identifies policy levers such as land-use regulation, building codes, rent regulation or tax and spending policies that can enhance the efficiency, inclusiveness or sustainability of housing markets. The report highlights ways to bring progress across these objectives and also discusses ways to address trade-offs that can arise among them.
• A Dashboard of Housing Indicators, which gathers indicators allowing policymakers to compare outcomes and policy settings across countries by topic.
• A set of Country Snapshots offering national overviews of housing conditions and policies.

A central policy objective of the OECD Housing Initiative is to ensure access to quality housing at affordable cost. Recent progress can be charted with new updates to cross-country indicators in the OECD Affordable Housing Database, covering the housing market, housing conditions and affordability, and public policies to facilitate affordable housing in more than 40 countries worldwide.

The Toolkit will be released on Monday 14 June. The update to the Affordable Housing Database will be released Wednesday 16 June.

OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann will deliver opening remarks to a high-level housing policy roundtable on Wednesday 16 June, beginning at 14:00 CEST (12:00 GMT).

The first panel, Mobilising the OECD Housing Policy Toolkit to future-proof housing markets, from 14:10 to 15:25, will include a presentation by Luiz de Mello, Director of Policy Studies in the OECD Economics Dept., followed by a panel discussion with various ministerial and high-level speakers.

A second panel, Investing in affordable and social housing to facilitate an inclusive economic recovery, from 15:25 to 16:30, will include introductory remarks by Stefano Scarpetta, OECD Director for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs, followed by a panel discussion with housing policy experts.

To register for the Housing Policy Roundtable, please go to: https://meetoecd1.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_o8UCtIlzRz618_AvEICeUA

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