Norwegian Housing policy - learning from European experiences

Let me introduce myself: I am Guri Størvold and secretary of state in the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development.

We have challenges in the Norwegian Housing policy that is in many cases quite similar to other countries. Therefore it is useful and inspiring with a conference focusing on transferring experiences from Europe. The program for this seminar has a broad range of topics with introducers coming from Great Britain, Denmark, Sweden and Austria. Thank you for coming to let us hear about your approach and work on housing in your countries! There are people here from The Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development and the State Housing Bank who will listen carefully to you.

Now let me turn to the Norwegian housing policy first, what is the Governments policy and what challenges do we have?

The overall vision within the Governments housing policy is that everyone should have adequate and secure housing in a good local environment. A main ideology within the Norwegian housing policies has been that everyone should be able to own their own home. This Government will continue to work for this goal and sees the housing-policy as an important part of the broader welfare-policy.

Some groups have fewer resources in the housing marked than the majority of the population, and need help to get access to the housing market. Many also need additional assistance and services in the home. The strategy for realising the vision of adequate and secure housing for all is therefore a more social and inclusive policy with sufficient supply of affordable housing for those who is in a disadvantaged position in the housing market.

The government has ambitious goals to reach this vision set out in the Government declaration of Soria Moria:

The Government aims to eradicate homelessness and the use of hostels and other low-quality accommodations and provide permanent housing for homeless instead.

This is an ambitious goal. We therefore intensify the efforts with the Norwegian national strategy to combat and prevent homelessness ”The Pathway to a permanent home”.

The Government has in the budget for 2007 proposed to use 10 mill for pilot projects for developing methods and initiatives/actions for following-up services to people who has lived in a temporary accommodation and is offered a permanent home.

The government is also developing and strengthening the Housing allowance and sees this as an important instrument to ensure housing-safety and to combat poverty.

Some parts of the bigger cities have special environmental and social challenges. The government wants to contribute to better living conditions in these areas and propose a special grant for this in 2007 on 43 mill NOK.

We also have a challenge in accessibility for physically handicapped and provide more universally designed building and houses.

The Norwegian State Housing Bank -Husbanken has an important role in reaching these goals. Husbanken provides, as all of you present here well know! loans and grants for disadvantaged groups in the housing market. Husbanken has an important role also as a coordinator and facilitator for networks, good practice awards, knowledge provider and advisory body. This role has been strengthened recent years

Now lets look at what has Norway learned from other countries, and in this case Europe, in developing our housing policy?

We have fetched experiences, knowledge and been inspired from other countries in many different fields, I will mention some of them here:

In the current work with revision of the Housing Acts in Norway we have looked to out nearest neighbour in East: Sweden. Sweden has had a system with warning from the landlord to the municipality to prevent petitions of evictions. The Ministry has proposed a system with volunteer warnings from the landlords to the municipality in the Tenancy Act. This green paper is now on public inquiry.

The Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development visited UK in 2004 and got ideas from the peer review on Rough Sleepers in 2004 in how we could orientate our own national strategy to combat and prevent homelessness “The pathway to a permanent home”. From this work we specifically got inspiration to set out concrete performance measures for the strategy. We also got a lot of inspiration from peer review as a method of working with the municipalities and transferring good examples between the municipalities in Norway.

There are now established small houses/freek houses or alternative houses for alternative living in Trondheim for a small group of homeless who do not want to live close to others, or have problems with doing so. The idea, and this is wellknown to many of you, came from Denmarks pilot work on “freek houses”. Many municipalities are planning to establish small houses/ freek houses. The Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development are currently looking at how the state in a stronger way can be a facilitator for such houses.

Austria who also is present here today has been doing pilot-work on petitions of evictions and has given important input to how we have orientated the work on preventing petitions of evictions here in Norway.

The Ministry and also municipalities and Husbanken has visited Barcelona to learn more about universally design. In the current revision of the Planning and Building Act the Ministry is considering a stricter legislation to ensure accessibility to and use of public domains for disabled persons.

Conferences like this is a good forum for exchanging experiences and mutual learning. But sometimes it can be hard to find out how and where to find the good examples – which country is doing what in a good way? What forums for exchanging experiences and ideas do exist? How can we build arenas for mutual learning?

I would like to pick one example on a forum for mutual learning from the work on homelessness. That is Peer Review as I mentioned before. Peer Review is arranged by the European Commision as a part of the program on social inclusion. Peer Review is a mutual learning place based on systematic evaluation of a good example.

The peer review has three main aims:

Mutual learning. What can we learn from other to improve our policies?

Improving the effectiveness of policies and strategies: What are the innovative elements in the example?

Facilitate the transfer of key components of policies which has proved effective and adjust these to the local conditions.

Norway has both been a participant in peer reviews arranged in other countries and a host nation for a peer review in September this year. The Norwegian strategy to combat and prevent homelessness “The Pathway to a permanent home” was evaluated as a good example. It is these days it is published a report on the internet pages to European Commision from this Peer Review process.

Thank you for your attention and good luck with the conference and further work!