 Felly, wrth gwrs, wrth gwrs, a hollwch i'w fath o'r sefydliad yma. Mae'r gwneud yn ynghylch gyda Juliette Tunstall ac rwy'n gallu'n ysgrifennu Llywodraeth yma ar Ysgrifennu Ffyrddol a Llywodraeth yma, ac rwy'n credu'n trefnio'n ymlaes i chi'n ei bod yn ymweld a'r ysgrifennu i'n gweithio'n ysgrifennu i'w amdano'r COVID-19 a'r bydd ymddangos ymddangos yma i ymddangos yng Nghyrchu Llywodraeth. Mae'r event oedd today yn ddiogelwch chi'n gwasanaeth Lifiedd i Gwyrdyn ni'n ddygu'n gofyn ysbyty o gychwyn i gweithio a'r prifysgol o gweithio'r defnyddiannau cyfu na'r ysgolig. Byddai'n gweithio ar gyfer y dyfodolddiaeth yma, byddai'n gweithio llef, yn fwy ffwrdd y newsletaidd â ffwrdd, gynnu'n bwysig o'r diogelwch i'r link yn gyfweld mor hyn yn y gweithio. Byddwn i'n ddweud i'r parwyswyr gwybod yn dweud eu hunain o'r llyfr yng Nghymru. A oeddwn i'n gwneud i Diane Mitchlin, oedd y profesiun mewn bydd yn y Institute of Development at the University of Manchester, ac oedd y Prifysgol IED a'r modyrartor o'r disgau o'r ddechrau. Rydyn ni'n amser o'n droi. Rydyn ni'n rhoi chyfnodd, beth sy'n ddiddorol i'r parwyswyr. I shout out to the remaining participants. Hopefully, good night to anyone. Thank you Juliet for the introduction, it's my absolute pleasure to chair this webinar. I would say this webinar draws very much on two issues of environment urbanisation, IID's journal, which highlights key issues in human settlements. two issues of the journal, one that we completed in April and one that will imminently be published, have focused on the challenge of housing in the global south. So we thought it would be a value to draw together the discussion with three experts on the housing challenges. Hopefully we're also going to have the experts coming online. All three of whom I feel I know quite well. So the first of one, Lajana Mahanda, has been Executive Director of Lomanti for many years. I feel I've grown up in the human settlements world learning about your work. Key partners in the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights with really an exceptional track record of addressing housing needs in Nepal. We also have Higor Cavalho, who has been working as a consultant researcher on housing issues in Brazil, engaging with government agencies in Brazil and also extending his knowledge beyond Brazil to look at some of the housing challenges in other countries. And finally, we have Anna Muller who has been actively working on housing issues through the Namibia Housing Action Group, the Shackfellers Federation of Namibia, for also for many years addressing challenges in Namibia, but also working with other partners within Shack's Lundwellers International to strengthen their response to the housing crisis. As you will have seen from Julia's introductory slides, all three speakers have had their work represented within the pages in the Environment and Urbanization. All have also contributed to housing debates in many other ways. So I am very conscious that we can only touch on some of the key issues in this webinar. We've kept it to an hour because we felt that was the most practical approach. We know it can be very challenging to have lots of webinar discussions to listen to, but they've all written extensively on the issues. So if any of you listening want more information, please feel free to contact myself or contact our webinar discussants directly. While we're still waiting for the last few people to join and in order to inform ourselves about your perspective and views, we wanted to just do two things. We have a mentee poll and we have a multiple choice question just to get a bit of a flavour of our audience. So we're going to start with the mentee poll. So we want to ask you what housing means to you. If you go to mentee and put in that code, you should be able to drop some key terms and we can collectively form a word cloud to get a bit of a sense about how you think about this issue. So if you're busy answering emails at the same time as listening to the webinar, please stop and start filling in the word cloud. Okay, so we'll keep monitoring. We're going to give you a few minutes to finish that. Obviously, the idea is you fill this in before hearing our speakers. So we're going to freeze it at some point in the next couple of minutes, but we'll provide it in the follow up information about this webinar. Now we have one more question for you. And that question is what do you think is the biggest barrier for low income households in accessing housing? That was very speedy. So I would just say this is, as some of you know, something that is a key concern to me. And I think affordability has always been one of the critical issues that I am always concerned that we don't think about enough so your responses are looking very good to me. Okay, so hopefully we've drawn you all away from trying to do multitask during the webinar. I'd now like to move on to look at the questions. So we wanted to start by discussing the nature of the current housing crisis in the global south. But if you would just summarize what you think is the nature of the global housing crisis, of the current housing crisis, either in Namibia or more broadly. Okay, I think if I'm talking about Namibia, lots of participants from other countries will recognise this, that in our situation the informality has grown to such an extent that we have now a situation where most of the people are actually living in informal settlements in Namibia. And we have reaching the 50% mark for urbanisation. Now Namibia might be one of the least populated countries in southern Africa. And we are when we're talking about informal settlements, we are not necessarily talking about only the big cities, but we are talking over more than 80 emerging small urban places, well established towns as well as a big city. So this is a very serious for us. And these are people with very low incomes and they are all over the country. And what we have found in the housing crisis, I can very much see in the context that it's very difficult to respond to this informal situation. When you keep on focusing on formal solutions, and often top down solutions that are isolated and not responding to what is on the ground, what happened in the communities. And communities are often a part of and are not included in the decision making process. So that is in short what I think from my side and I think it is, it is also not only limited to Namibia this kind of problems. Thank you. Thank you, Lodana. Would you like to maybe add drawing on your experience in Nepal? Yes, Diana. And namaste to everyone. And thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to share some of my experience and my thoughts as well. I'll speak in the context in relation to Nepal. It's not really very different scenario from what Anne has just said. See, we have like 500,000 people living in the slums in rural and urban areas and about 7% of the city population live in the informal settlements and about 40% of the total population live in the rental housing and in Kathmandu valley it is even higher 50% lives in rental housing. In the poor communities, in the slum communities, the housing is not good. We all know that. We have also seen that like in any other parts of the world, it's also the same. Access to basic facilities such as water, sanitation is not very good and even access to road and opportunity for livelihood that is also very challenging. And housing finance is not easily accessible for the poor people. That's why you know that the housing is also not affordable for the poor people because the finance is not easily accessible. The banks actually they require, they require, they require the people to put something on collateral land or housing to get a housing loan. So that's a big challenge. Land and housing prices are also very, very, very extremely high. It's very, very expensive in the urban areas. Yeah, and so this is also all a constant for people to afford a house and also the access to it's not only a house itself but then access to basic facilities is also a challenge and also for people living in the low income rental housing also a very challenging situation. So it's a, yeah, this is the scenario. And I have actually found that, you know, when I, when I tell you talk to the community leaders in some of the communities, you know, they are saying that this is very challenging. For the people living on rental housing now, you know during this pandemic and COVID context also paying a rent is also very challenging because they lost a livelihood, they lost their income, and to pay the rent is a challenge. Right. Everything is very, very difficult. Yes, very briefly. Thank you. Igor, does that resonate with your experience in Brazil? Yes, absolutely. And thank you, Diana, for the opportunity to be here. I'm happy, very happy to attend this panel. I would say that the current housing crisis in Latin America is not new. It was from the colonial time centuries ago, and since then land revenues and opportunities has have been denied to the poorest sectors. The late industrialization in the 50s combined with the new liberal policies in the 90s, just worsened the scenario. I have seen that COVID-19 didn't change this, this scenario just put a light on it. Right. The most vulnerable sectors before the pandemics are also the ones that suffer the more during the pandemics. Right. So about Latin America, we're talking about a region in which 30 to from 30 to 60% of the households living in formal settlements depending on the country. Right. Not to say about those who live in the streets, those who cannot afford paying their rents, those who are over-indapted with mortgages and so on. So I would say that crisis, the very nature of this crisis is historical, social, structural and political. OK, thank you. We're going to move on to the next question, which is particularly around COVID-19, and I'm going to start your goal with you. Brazil, unfortunately, has some notoriety in the COVID-19 context. So what do you think has been learned in the pandemic context about our failure to address the housing challenge? The first thing I would say is that it's evident now that housing is not only a matter of special justice, it's really connected to public health issues. Right. And this is something that we already knew, but now it's more evident to a broader audience. Secondly, I would say that also the failure of the main housing policies in Latin America, because in the two last decades, most of the investments consisted of providing subsidies and credits to people to access mortgage markets and to buy a home in the outskirts of the cities, which only increased social and environmental problems, right? Without solving effectively the housing crisis. But I also have to announce that even though some temporary housing measures were taken place by national governments in Latin America during the pandemics, some of the most interesting experiences I have seen so far came from the local social movements. I have to mention the case of Padaisopolis, which is the second biggest Islam with about 100,000 people living in Sao Paulo, where the local association was able to follow up households, identify those with the symptoms of COVID-19, move them to a temporary shelter in an old school, negotiate with the municipality to promote water supply to all. And so I think this also gives us hope, right? I would say these are some of the things I really have learned so far. Okay, thank you. I'd like to now also pass to Anna. Anna, do you have things that you'd like to add in terms of understanding how the COVID-19 context has highlighted issues around housing in Libya? I think now just to connect with what Igor has said that healthy environments are very critical when these kinds of disasters come to play in your country and now it's a global situation. The basic things that are important as access to water, access to sanitation and access to sufficient space where we don't need this when we have this overcrowding situation. I think that is what I would like to, and then what we have also learned in these times is that to have organized communities to respond to the crisis is very important. We are able to have learned how we can deal with what is happening in our areas and what is happening with us in this context. So maybe that is the two aspects I would like to add to what was said already. So really a very strong sense that COVID-19 has highlighted the public health crisis, which has previously perhaps been noted but not given sufficient attention, but also nice that you're getting some positive lessons as well, some positive consequences, the demonstrated capacity of communities to organize and take care of themselves in the absence of government. Okay, so before we leave this question, Lejana, what does the experience from Nepal tell us? Just to add, so what COVID has taught us is it has made us realize that house is a life, home is a life. It is not only a shelter, it is not only a physical infrastructure, it is much more beyond that. During the lockdown during this pandemic period now, so we are all staying home, working from home, so it has become a workplace, it's an office, it's a childcare center, it's a school, it's a college, it's a uni, it's a workplace. I mean it's not only for us, even for the poor people, it's the same and then you imagine it's a hospital, it's a healthcare center now. So the home is now your external world and internal world became one, one into a house, right? And then you imagine the poor people who have already been living in the congested one-room, two-room house with a big family members. Now they also have to give space for all this, for you know, a space for the school, the children to do your own work and also to care the sick and people. I mean, you know, you stay home for quarantine, you stay home for isolate yourselves, so it has, it's much more and then so it's a very, very challenging for the poor people how to manage, you know, how to manage with the small challenging space with inadequate basic facilities. So that's a big, big challenge. And also what emerges me is like, you know, so people are also insensitive, you know, the official, responsible government officials in some context. You know, they have become insensitive and some of the communities here are also facing forced eviction. Notice as well, we had one small eviction case already happened about 12, 14 people, small community. They were forced, forcefully evicted, the houses were burned down, even in this pandemic. So this is the learning from the COVID, like people can become so insensitive, even in this situation. Isn't this a big learning, right? Because of the lack of policies, because of the lack of orientation, proper training, exposure and the, you know, the need to improve the housing. That has not been the kind of like, you know, discuss and debate going on. And also there has been not much work done. I think that actually resulted in bringing this kind of insensitive. Right. So this is, this is a big learning. And then we really need to do a lot more to improve the housing situation of the poor people, of the low income people in the slums and then in other low income communities as well. So how do we, how do we sensitize the governments? How do we make them realize that this way it's not going to work on this way? We really have to bring a lot of change, a reform, you know, to transform the society to, you know, to close the gap between the rich and the poor, between the slum dealers and then the people and the rest of the communities. So when will that kind of learning, when will that kind of enlightenment will actually occur happen among the people, the decision makers? So that is a big question. So I think you've highlighted two really important points. On the one hand, the fact that the house is more important, the house is more than just simply a place to sleep. And of course we know that for low income women who are more constrained because of their role looking after children, the house has long been a place for work also, but now other people are realizing that. So we have some advance and sensitivity, but thank you Lajana in highlighting the evictions crisis. We are also very conscious that I think generally that there is a fear that evictions will have already risen in some cases and will continue to rise. And we undoubtedly need more work to sensitize a whole range of actors and agencies to be better in their task. But you've also led very neatly into the third question I wanted to pose and Lajana, I want to start with you in answering this question. And as you know, better than me, housing is not a new issue for governments. Governments have tried before to address housing. We could argue they haven't tried enough, but they have tried. So I guess my question to you and then to Anna and Higor is, why have they not been more successful in addressing housing needs? In Nepal actually, you know the government has actually really done much like it's not that previous efforts been failed, but then not much efforts being made. We have these, the people's housing program implemented by the government and that is actually targeted for the, you know, for some marginalized groups and communities, and it's very limited. And now the government is also implementing the project to replace the patch roofs to teen roofs, right? And this year they are actually targeting to reach out 150,000 families as well. But then there's not much otherwise from the government side, right? And after the earthquake, well, there has been some initiatives being made to introduce local technology to make the housing affordable for the poor people. Yeah, that is just happening now, right? And then so what we have actually done is what we have actually tried out while working with the poor communities with the slum dealers is we have actually supported, worked with the communities to establish community best finance system, right? Community, so we have about 40 saving and credit cooperatives led by the grassroots women's 38,000 members involved there and they have now total saving amount of around US dollar 13 million. And one thought of the loans from these cooperatives are invested in land and housing, so you can see that, you know, even the poor people's funding, you know, how much, you know, it's going to meet the land and housing need of the people. And when you say housing, it is to improve the house to construct a new house or even to upgrade the house. So many things. And that has actually supported and meeting the housing needs of the people and we're very happy that we have been able to support and help to establish this community best finance system. We have actually worked in partnership with local governments and some municipalities to operate the slum communities, improving their access to water sanitation facilities or even to conserve the open space to conserve the cultural heritage sites to conserve the traditional water spouse, which is very important for the communities, even to improve the housing as well. So slum upgrading works we have actually done. We have also implemented low income housing schemes to demonstrate that, you know, the ways how we can actually address the housing issues of the poor community. So we have implemented quite a few in some municipalities. And we have also done a demonstration project on rental housing, how we can actually improve the facilities in the rental housing and also make it affordable for the low income families as well. And we have also partnered with the commercial banks to make the finance available for the low income people, you know, so we have actually worked like a bridge between the communities and the commercial banks so we so the people can actually get, you know, the loans housing finance from the banks, easily, and in a convenient matter. So these are the ways you know what we have actually tried and all these ways they are working are working perfectly well. Right. And we have also been sharing our efforts our success, working with the communities housing the poor people, this has worked well. Right. Thank you. And the article, which Juliet referenced right at the beginning talks about some efforts to scale up that work with real and the challenges. Okay. Why do you think, in a Latin American context, perhaps in a Brazilian context, where, to be frank, the government, at least under Lula was seen to be trying very hard to do this, why have they not been more successful. Why do you think the challenges that you talked about earlier. I have a question, and I think that the 21st century in Latin America started with very progressive governments, but after the 2008 financial crisis, they were replaced by new liberal ones, right. And these new governments, they stopped all the policies that were taking place. This is one of the reasons the second would be the economic crisis, right. It led to difficult to local governments to implement their policies. And finally, I would say that, even though there was an effort, even the government that you mentioned. I think that the mainly, mainly the housing policies in the region consisted of massive credits and subsidies in the outskirts of the city with housing developments, and it benefited mainly mainly real estate developers and the financial capital that is related to financialization of housing, right. So, yeah, I think these are key aspects to understand these contradictions in Latin American case. Thank you. And I know your E&U article expands on that, and surely really important that we understand those learning experiences, as there is increasing interest among governments to address housing. Exactly. Anna, I know that in Namibia you've long been working with the government who have been supporting some of your work. Why do you think you have not had more success? The reason is when it comes to a national policy or a national strategy, I think the focus favour often the house as a structure and delivering political goods like the politicians think it's a good idea that we built a lot of houses, especially in the light of our lightest mass housing, which was the last very big project that the government addressed. But I think what people don't really see that how important it is to release the opportunities, rather than development opportunities, rather than focusing on building houses, I think that is often a constraint in the thinking of how can we provide houses because they're thinking from a provider point of view and not see the government and we still found our politicians often talking like that. So I think it's about for us to scale up opportunities for housing development. And when we do informal settlement upgrading, I think our focus has moved very much the past three years to focusing on settlement upgrading that will result in a security of tenure where people can start developing their houses from doesn't matter what sector although the majority of the people 89% of the population of the year cannot actually access commercial loans from the banks, so they have to find alternatives. But it is very important that we focus on our settlement upgrading and to result in a kind of scale that we have reached in Rhubarbys, where through that process of all partnership working together you, you release a lot of plots at one side and people can carry on building their own houses or access it through other efforts or through like the federation construction that have started. And another thing is that I feel is that nationally we actually need a sense of urgency, a vision to to address that urgency to solve the problems and not let regulations and that dominate the procedure. I think that we have got some of the cities that are really so busy to look at how we will guide how will we deliver the best, how will we regulate that they cannot see the big challenge facing them. And I think it's very important that if people are part of the process, we can get opportunities for solutions to scale up. So that maybe I've already got to your next question, but just when I that yeah. So before we turn to questions from the audience, if you have questions you need to input now. I just briefly wanted to hear from each of the speakers, the top three recommendations for action. So any of already started a little bit on your recommendations for action. Your request that the government moves off the perfect optimum solution to something that can be done quickly and in recognition. But let me not preempt you so Anna top three recommendations for action. If we keep this brief, we will have then more time to answer the questions of the audience. Yes, I just wanted to link what you said, what you also mentioned, I think these solutions, one of the aspects that government has to focus on is allowing local solutions to take place, don't try and do it from the central central take the policy role to do facilitate that the local solutions can take place. The other issue is that that we engage in empower communities to work in partnership with the formal sector with the government with the private sector with the local authorities or whatever government structures with the universities. And also with the associations of local authorities. And of course the biggest partnership is between the people and their local authority or the authority closest to them. So that is between that that having the community the opportunity empower them to participate but working with others, not in isolation, not thinking they will bring all the solutions but facilitate that they can take part in the process. The other one. I would like to focus on is that we have to be pragmatic. We have to implement and we have to learn and we have to from what we learn as we go and roll out to scale, we implement that license and share that license, create the environment of learning on a practical level, where we can can see what license have been of use for the specific locality, and use for a different locality so I think in, in a maybe we had that kind of experience that we could scale up from one town to 16 towns from one informal settlements to involving 23 informal settlements, just because we had a share of use for the specific locality, and use for a different locality so I think in, in a maybe we had that kind of experience that we could scale up from one town to 16 towns from one informal settlements to involving 23 informal settlements, just because we are sharing what we are doing while we are doing it. Okay, thank you. One of the questions is about sharing, but we may come back to that if we have time. So, Lejana, what's what's your thinking about the top three recommendations for action. Our constitution guarantees right to housing. So housing is a fundamental right, but the people have not been able to feel that you know they are secured, right so people have not experienced, they are not feel secured. So what we need to do is like you know, realizing or making it happen in reality so not really keeping the policies and commitments only in the paper so far that that has been the that is it like you know so it has not been implemented so that is a big challenge so so we have to, we have to, we have to bring the policies the commitments from paper to paper to the ground so actually people feel secured we have to make that happen. So in relation to this my first recommendation would be to provide security and upgrade the facilities in the settlement so that is very important right. And also like you know so we have to promote people later development community late process community late housing program housing initiative so we have to keep people in the central into planning and also implement this and as well which is not actually happening. So that has to be done to ensure the sustainability and also to take the other the other major issues in relation to housing to take care of like so people need to be in the central. And we have to make finance and technical knowledge technical know how easily accessible available to the people. So this is also very very important. So this will actually contribute in making the housing affordable to the people so these are my three recommendations. Okay, thank you. Go please your three recommendations. Okay, so first of all, I think we have to provide water supply to all right. One cannot take care of him or herself without water during the pandemics and just in Brazil for for instance we're talking about 40 million without access to water and more than 100 million of people without sanitation. The population right, and this is a perspective of the whole region also. And second the second recommendation I think would be. I'll take back what lajana mentioned before we have to stop evictions. There are some countries in the Latin America that implemented it during the pandemics. It's the case of Puerto Rico, Argentina, Costa Rica, Colombia, Panama, even the Mexico City implemented it, but in many others. Editions are continuing. It's the case of Brazil, for instance, where social movements wrote a manifesto against evictions, and they are keeping, they keep doing it right and the third recommendation from a Brazilian perspective but I can, I can say it also in Latin American one, we have to enhance democracy. Right. And as to allow, as to allow local governments to as Anna mentioned before, as to allow local government to be able to conceive and to implement more than concede to implement housing policies as diversified as housing need as diverse housing needs are right. So these are my three top recommendations. Okay, thank you. We're going to return to you all in about 12 minutes, but we now going to have time to look at the questions that panellists have that our listeners have put up so Juliet very effectively organized a poll questions and a poll so we'll go to the ones that topped the poll. The first one is looking at the landscape of public finance from Ben Bradlow. So the question, I think you can all see. I'm curious about the changing landscape of public finance for low income housing in a post COVID world. I'm just reading it out for those of you following on your mobile phones. Many governments are investing or planning to invest in various fiscal stimuli measures to jump start to pressed economies. Do the panellists see governments in their respective contexts, making low income housing a focus for these investments. So let me start with Igor. Do you see that in Brazil is and then I'll pass to the other panelists. Well, I don't think so. Actually, housing does not appear, not only in Brazil, but also in Mexico and in other countries in Chile. I don't think that housing is being seen as an stimulus for economy, but also at the same time, it's important to mention that some policies have been implemented to privatize. Housing enterprise public enterprises and to to conceive policies to that benefits mainly financial investments, right. So in the one hand, I don't think that housing has been seen as a key aspect to solve the problem, the economic problem. But at the same time, in some cases, it can be done in a more financialized perspective. Okay, thank you. Lejana, what about the situation in Nepal? Is there discussion about investing in housing to stimulate economic, a very depressed COVID-19 related economy? No, not at all, actually. So everything is in the heart, actually, right. And so housing has never been a priority of the urban development. So when you talk about urban development, it's all about to do with infrastructure, like your widen road or you do something like in relation to infrastructure. But then housing is not seen as a priority sector or as something what you have explained like a contribution in the economy. So that's why for the poor people also getting all the housing finance access to housing loan, it is difficult. Even for others, it is even for the rest of the communities also it is actually difficult. It's very challenging because the housing is not a priority. That's why access to housing finance is also very difficult because it's not a priority. So for the poor people and especially it is very challenging. This has been actually, this needs to be discussed a lot to be debated a lot and then a lot of policies also need to be introduced and practiced where actually housing can be seen as a driver of the economy as well. And that has not actually happened. So whatever, whatever the initiation has been taken by the private sector is, is like you know to house the people who can actually afford, because the house is constructed by the companies. It's quite expensive. It's very expensive actually for the normal people to afford, right, and they're also producing it in a limited manner, right, on also very expensive. So how do we meet the housing need of the poor people? Maybe you know the low income housing, low cost housing, inventing the low cost technology that is appropriate in different context. Also very important so we can we make the housing affordable to the poor people, but then like you know investment is required in this sector. So investment is not there, right, if he if he can actually get the investment to mobilise. So maybe this will also generate more opportunity for jobs for jobs that will also like you know mobilise the economy, but then that is not actually happening. Okay, thank you, Anna. Any sign of housing investment related to COVID-19 stimulus in Namibia? No, I am similar to the experience in Nepal. There was no discussions or currently about allocating budgets to housing. I think that is that is remaining to be see other opportunities come out, but it's not financial because the whole issue around me must be conscious that was a big issue from the government has made opportunities for communities to start becoming involved in settlement upgrading. So that is my new new opportunities come out, but there is no pockets of money coming yet or allocated yet to address the housing specifically. Okay, thank you. I wanted now to turn to one of the next questions, the one that's topping the poll is from Tianan Brennan. Do you believe we have an efficient knowledge sharing network among experts and organisations operating in the global south, particularly around housing? So Anna, did you want to begin perhaps on the knowledge sharing network? Well, we amongst communities, we, I was very fortunate to be linked very early in the 1990s to the Shackslam Dwellers International, which allow us to learn and build lessons and develop and make mistakes and learn and build lessons across the countries. And also involve governments and local authorities in these lessons, which we are still using that basis for in in country by when we initiate a new programme and new settlement upgrading, there's always others that are interested and share and come on board. So I think on the community level, I am, I believe we really, really benefit a lot from this sharing with involving the communities actively sharing also involving ours. Others in the process. So that local sharing has given people opportunities, empower them knowledge and skills to implement. And yeah, that is from our side. And we are also working with different universities and linking up with universities from the north, our countries in the south. This is how we get our knowledge and learn more. So that that is happening. Thank you. Lejana, did you want to add anything on the context? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's similar to what Anne has, and has just said, like, you know, we have been associated with the SDI, SCHR, CTNet, and IAID itself, HEIC, like, you know, so those are the kind of like, you know, established organisations for long time, and we have actually benefited a lot from their knowledge and experiences. And actually they, they are also a coalition of the many organisations we have been working on the housing issues for a long time for many decades like, and they have a wealth of experiences there so we actually learned. I mean, we learn by, we actually, we do and learn and then share and again re-lawn like from each other's experiences. So I am not a technical person, like, you know, I didn't study the housing and housing the poor people in the university or so. I learn from the networks actually, and that has been a big asset for me as well, like, you know, to be associated with all these networks working on housing, promoting for the housing rights of the people, really working a very dedicated organisations, people, you know, the leaders in all these organisations, like, we have actually benefited a lot. But then this is at the community level as also answered, I, being the civil society organisations and then the community representatives, we have actually benefited a lot. So maybe for the government side, like, I don't, I'm just wondering now, you know, how the government is learning from where they are taking the knowledge and experiences, or their capabilities, or like, you know, human resource building on, it's only from the university degree or also from the practical experiences from ground, like we have actually learnt. So maybe that is what is lacking at the government side, and maybe that is why they haven't actually developed the, you know, the human emotions on housing part, like, so it has been very much technical knowledge, maybe, like, you know, so maybe, like, you know, we also need to think, like, you know, how we can actually build the sensitivity, how we can build the emotion, like, you know, how we can build feelings on housing, like, you know, rather than not just looking housing at a physical entity. But then looking as a house, as a life. OK. So, Igor, I'm not going to turn to you for that question, because I want to touch on one more question before we close. We have eight minutes left. Mahalala Chathirgy has raised this other question about affordable rental housing, which we all know is a huge challenge. So the question is, the Government of India is now talking about affordable rental housing. What is the international experience about it? With contractual daily wage labour expanding, i.e. people paid by the day, how will they pay rent on a permanent basis? So Igor, do you have any reflections from Brazil or more widely from Latin America about affordable rental as a public housing option? Yeah, public rental housing is not a very strong policy in Latin America. Latin American experiences on housing are mainly historically on home ownership, right? So this is not something that is very strong. Some progressive local governments have done, but it's very, very, very small, these experiences. I can mention the experience of Sao Paulo, the city in which I live. And yeah, in the 90s, during the crisis of the 90s, a very, very left wing administration was able to conceive a public housing model and later in the 2000s also. But they are not very, very, very important compared to allowing people to buy a home in the market, right? Yeah, thank you. I think you're right. It's been very challenging for governments in the global south, also challenging for governments in the north. Najana, did you want to briefly add on rental housing and then, team, we have one minute each to conclude? See, I already said that in Nepal, 40% of the people live in rental housing and in Kathmandu Valley it is 58%, right, because it's highly organised as well. But then all these rental houses are private houses. So if you have a house, you rent one room, two room or a flat to rent out. And also many migrants coming to the city, so the people who can afford to build a house, we have a space, we have a land or we can actually afford in building a house. Just build a house in order to actually get some income from that. Like, you know, you rent out and then you own income from that. But from the government side, nothing actually has been initiated on rental housing. And we have actually, Lomanti has actually constructed, we have actually done one low-income rental housing project, on the one with 24 units. It's a very small scale with 24 units. And right, and then we actually did it to demonstrate, as you know, demonstration project that how rental housing can be done, you know, with people, which is actually, we can make affordable to the people and as well as providing all the basic facilities that people need it, like, you know, and then we even organise the communities if they have even any issues so we can also have a dialogue. So, kind of like building a harmonious relationship with the tenants and then the owner. Otherwise, this is also very issue, like, you know, the tenants and owners always fighting. Now we see during this COVID period, it's just a big issue, like, you know, even if you live in a rental housing, if you are infected, the owners, like, you know, want to evict you, not to put you there. And also, the rent is also a big challenge because people don't also have money to pay rent now and even, you know, the communities that we have been supporting working people are boring from the co-operatives, you know, just to pay a rent, right. And so this is a big challenge, but then actually there are ways we can do it. We have done only one, right, but then that is very successful and people are very, very happy. We have a lot of demand, you know, a lot of demand for the rooms there, like, you know, people are asking if the rooms are available, they would like to come and sit there. It is also for the safety and access to good facilities and affordable rent and so many things. So the government actually need to invest on the rental housing as well, but we don't see it's happening in Nepal. No, and not in many other places. Okay, we have about 30 seconds each to conclude. Anna, I'm going to start with you having listened to the discussion. Any final thoughts? Yeah, I've just, sorry, I missed something about Bain's question, which I wanted to share something from Namibia. I think we didn't get extra budgets from the government. But government was giving the budget to the federation that they promised, which for us in COVID-19 time, I need to stress, is to keep things going is also very important in these times, where you have constructive interventions, where you can reach the poor, it's just as important to see that we can continue with this work and use whatever opportunities there are to assist communities to improve their lives. I think that is what I want to contribute. Thank you. Igor, did you have any final thoughts? Yes, thanks. I would say that Latin America is the new center of the pandemics in the current moment, right? Six out of ten most infected countries are in Latin America in proportional rates to population. And I think this is because, well, in the first level, there's a lack of clear policies from national governments for providing people to have the means to do proper quarantine and to implement lockdown. But the second and the second level that's combined with the first one is the fact that informality, housing informality is very important in the region also, right? So I think that the housing issue is more and more in the center of the agenda and it must be. But we will only be able to put it in effective, effectively put it in the center of agenda if we enhance democracy and if we overcome neoliberalism. That's my final remarks. And thank you for the opportunity. Thank you. And Adriana, any final thoughts? Yeah, I feel that, you know, it's so disappointing. It's so painful to see the gaps, you know, the inequities in our societies, hundreds of thousands of people still living in such a deprived situation. And we haven't been able to do much and whatever we are doing from our own capacity is very, very limited, like, you know. So how long the people will have to suffer and then this pandemic has actually made everything all, you know, visible, you know, the extent the poor people are suffering like, you know, because not because not having a house or access to water and there's a livelihood like so many things like, you know, and I just wonder like, you know, for how long these people, the poor people they have to keep on suffering. That means we have to do something now, like, you know, we need to take radical steps. It's not like it's not postponing. It is very important now for the safety of your own life, for the safety of our life, you know, for the prosperity of the city, society, harmony, peace, like, you know, it is important for all these aspects that we close the gap between the poor and the rich. And we really invest at least in the housing conditions, improve the housing conditions of the, of the marginalized communities who don't have a good housing facilities is very important. We need to do something radical, like, you know, not just to having policies but getting into actions, you know, to give them to improve their lives and to bring it to help them to live a dignified life. Thank you. So thank you very much to Lajana, Igor and Anna. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I would say I think we have a wealth of documentation in the current issues of environment and urbanization. We've also started, as some of you know, to run a special COVID-19 section. I think we collectively feel that now is a chance to move our urban vision away from shiny buildings, beautify beautification of city centers, and, and really pull the eyes of governments, not to the, to the grand visions of what urban futures could be like, but to the present realities, and use this pandemic crisis to as all of you have said to create more inclusive cities and address the housing crisis, be it a crisis around affordability, a crisis around overcrowding and a crisis around the lack of services. So thank you very much to all of you. Thank you to our listeners. Thank you for all the questions. I'm sorry we didn't get to all of them. And I look forward to seeing you in some sense on some virtual space sometime soon. Bye bye. Bye bye. Thank you.