 Brilliant. Thank you, Juliette, for this introduction. Thank you, everybody, to be here with us today. It's a really exciting exchange. We've been cooking this for a while, so it's great to be able to actually have this experience together, and also to have a set of also participants here with us. As Juliette was saying today, we are co-hosting the IID Debate with Architectures on Frontiers UK, and this is part of ongoing collaboration with a network of organizations striving to secure access to adequate housing in the inner city area of Johannesburg. It's great that we have here with us at those organizations represented, such as CERI and one-to-one agency of engagement. We're going to introduce some of the speakers soon, and we're going to hear from them and the work that they're doing there. Also, we are putting that in dialogue with experiences and partners. Some of them we worked quite closely with, such as the ones in Sao Paulo and some new conversations. That's also with the colleagues in London striving to a similar type of agenda. This event is also part of a wider agenda for IID, focusing on housing justice. We have been putting a set of projects initiatives, learning exchanges, advocacy work around this topic. For us, focusing on the retrofitting of informally occupied buildings is crucial to advance a more socially just city, as well as for us to make progress towards a more environmentally sustainable urban development pathway. Making sure that retrofitting efforts to secure space for affordable, as well as community-led housing, is key to secure the right to adequate housing, as well as to address social inequalities in cities. It can also enable socially just pathways to decarbonize cities. And in a recent report that Bill Change published, for example, improving existing buildings can save 60% embodied carbon compared to resilient new construction. So it makes sense environmentally, and it makes sense socially. In a recent online publication that my colleague Camila Cosinha and I have written, we have documented some of the experiences of housing social movements in Sao Paulo in relation to the decarbonization agenda. And we show that they are very clear examples of how a socially just pathway of community-led housing can actually make a really substantive and important progress towards the decarbonization agenda. So if this is so clear, the benefits of it in so many different ways, why is it so difficult to get people-centered and affordable experiences of retrofitting in inner-city areas of the ground? Why we have so few examples of good practices in this field? So this is a key challenge and a key topic that we'd like to discuss with our panelists. Today, we discuss in more detail the policy and practice bottlenecks to this question. And we want to hear really concrete and practical experiences that social, technical, and legal support organizations are facing when working with grassroots groups to try to get this off the ground, really to implement initiatives of affordable, inclusive, and sustainable retrofitting of existing buildings for affordable housing. So who is in the room with us today? Speaking, we have Lauren Roiston, who is the director of the Research and Advocacy in Social Economic Rights Institute, called CERI, based in Johannesburg, that has been doing lots of interesting legal work, especially to try to protect communities against evictions in Johannesburg. And also from Johannesburg, we have Cephisto Mitimunie, who is a project manager and a technical assistance for a very exciting organization that's called One-to-One Agency of Engagement in South Africa, which is a group of built environment professionals that have been working with communities in various different ways from upgrading of informal settlements to the advancement of affordable housing in the city areas and using design methodologies to do that. From London, we have Saskia O'Hara, who is a legal case worker and community legal organizer at Public Interest Law Center, and she will be talking about her experience in working with communities and using legal systems to try to advance the right to adequate housing in London. And from Brazil, we have Ricardo Moretti, who is a visiting professor at the Universidade de Brasília and a member of Labijuta, who is a research group called Territorial Justice Laboratory or Laboratório de Justiça Territorial in the Federal University of ABC. And with Ricardo Moretti, we have a long history of collaboration from IID, but also ASF, Beatriz de Cali has also done a series of works with him as well and in conversation with South Africa as well. And finally, Beatriz de Cali, who is a reader in urbanism at the School of Art, Architecture and Design at London Metropolitan University and also managing associates of ASF UK. And Beatriz is gonna be talking particularly to this collaboration and the history of what's going on in relation to what ASF UK with the support of IID is doing with this network of organization in Johannesburg around this agenda. So we have a bit of a packed conversation. We're gonna divide the conversation into mostly three blocks. The first block is gonna be around some of the policy and practice bottlenecks to advance this agenda and we're gonna hear from all the speakers. Then the second block, we're gonna be hearing from them on the experience of supporting and engaging with communities, what role has that played, what has been the experience of communities and their support organizations in advancing that, what have been the main challenges and also some of the wins that they've had in this field. Then we're gonna have some question and answers. Time for you to also keep throwing us your questions, comments in the chat, please. And then after that, we're gonna ask each of the panelists to tell us what's next for them, where is the crucial issues that they're focusing on right now in this moment and that's actually the main things that they've been working on in the more immediate times. Finally, we then have Beatriz who is gonna tell us about the collaboration in Johannesburg and the next step on that collaboration. So let's start. And Lauren, I'm gonna start with you, bring you in. So tell us a little bit about the policy and practice bottlenecks from your experience in advancing this agenda in Johannesburg. Thanks, Alex, and hello to everyone who's on the call in the meeting. I think that the key issue that I would like to raise is whether or not there's a place for the poor in Johannesburg's inner city. So there were a lot of occupiers in buildings, in Johannesburg, in the inner city precincts that have been abandoned by their owners and are derelict and have been over many years occupied by poor people. So occupiers in South Africa have statutory protections and that's based on our history. So I'd like to address that firstly. Well, secondly, first year, I'd just like to address the systemic problem that we're experiencing, which is the lack of affordable and formal accommodation for poor people in the inner city, which is a good location. It's not only about affordability, but it's also about availability. So we've done a series of snapshot surveys over a few years, which indicate that even the lowest priced rental and social housing units are not affordable and they're very few available. The other important point about the system in operation is that we're really operating in a context where local government is in a severe crisis all over the country. And then I must mention, last year in August, on the 31st of August, there was a fire in an occupied building in Albert Street called the Usundiso building and over 70 labs were lost. So this question of occupied inner city buildings is really quite high on the agenda. In terms of what's available, we've got a constitution, which protects the right to housing. And in particular, in section 26, section 26 where you would read the housing rights, section 26.3 is that no one may be evicted from their home or have their home demolished without an order of court, made after considering all the relevant circumstances, no legislation may permit arbitrary evictions. Critical year is the legacy of apartheid and with that came forced removals and massive dispossession. So that's what the constitutional clause is trying to address. Then we have something called the PI Act, which gave, which is the prevention of illegal eviction and unlawful occupation of land act, which we refer to as the PI Act. It's an unwieldy act in name. And it's the law that gives effect to section 26.3. So before making an order, an eviction order, the court must consider all the relevant circumstances and it must be just and equitable. So that's the historic, that's the current framework. We've also got a policy framework, which is the emergency housing program, a national framework, which is meant to deal with people in crisis, either evictions or natural disasters. And then we have in Johannesburg, something called a TEA, which is a temporary emergency accommodation. So that's the framework. One of the important issues which I'd like to raise now is how we have a practice of upgrading in informal settlements in South Africa. The application of that practice in the city buildings does not yet exist. So we're really hoping to learn from others in this event. There isn't a program of affordable public rental. There is on paper, but it hasn't been rolled out. It's called rooms for rent and it's contained in a fairly recent policy of the city of Johannesburg. People living in the buildings, the issues around basic services, the issues around their social needs, they're invisible to official systems. And one of our strategies, and I know FISO will deal more with this, is how to make these places livable. So whilst the framework puts in place options for relocation following a court order, that's one of the key procedural requirements. We're also interested in exploring how people may stay, and we could have planned upgrading logic to these buildings. So the key problems are urban management. There's very little urban management in the inner city of Johannesburg. There's even less building management. Even in those buildings where people have been relocated by the city of Johannesburg, the building management is very weak and in some cases quite absent. Another key blockage, and Alex I'm nearly done, is recalcitrance on the part of the city of Johannesburg. Non-compliance with court orders, stigmatization and discrimination of people who are living in occupied buildings. The stigmatization concerns, there's a social stigmatization, and there's also discrimination in attitude, not in law around migrants and foreign migrants. And one of the key phrases currently being used in the media and by politicians is this notion of hijacking, building hijacking, which we don't use because we don't fully understand what it means, but we can talk more to that perhaps in conversation. The important point that I want to end with is our legal framework, constitutional framework exists. There is series of legal principles that have been enacted due to rulings from the constitutional court and the Supreme Court with things like the procedures required, substantive issues like temporary emergency, alternative accommodation must be provided if people would become homeless, which is often the case, that's why people are living there in the first place because they don't have a home and meaningful engagement, which means that people must be caught to, consulted with, which doesn't happen very often. And the final one, legal principle I'll mention is about municipal joiner. So even if an occupation is in privately owned property, the municipality has to be joined because it's a state obligation to protect residents against unlawful occupation and to provide alternative accommodation. Thanks, Alex. Great, Lauren, thanks for that. Extremely clear and really insightful. And I'm really glad how you also mentioned these challenges of applying the lessons learned from an upgrading of informal settlement perspective into the maybe incremental improvements of buildings in the city areas. Maybe it's a few so you can come in here and tell us a bit more about some of the challenges exactly in that operation from a more practical perspective from a physical perspective, a built environment perspective, what do you see as some of the main bottlenecks in that respect? Thank you, Alex. Thank you. Thank you, Lauren, as well. Hello, everyone. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, depending on where you are in the world. We focus a lot, as Alessia said, on the physical environment. And what we do in that space is we look at community engagement and then we also look at the physical environment in terms of the technology as well. So what I would like to focus on, Alex, is actually, I think where some of the bottlenecks lie, is actually in the policy environment and processes as well, not just the formulation. Some of the policies are very good, but the way they have been applied doesn't really work in the city, right? And you can see this with, firstly, the policy environment in that, the difficulty for community members and stakeholders who try to enact change in the city in accessing policies. You find that a lot of these policies are behind a lot of red tape, they are behind a lot of bureaucracy and so on. So it's very difficult for residents and people to access those policies. And secondly, we see that there's a lot of, like there's a lot of disruption in the political environment, which has an impact on the policy environment. So we have, we've seen a couple of mayors come and go in Jovek. I think we've had like four different mayors in the last two years. So that's caused disruptions and has slowed down the policy environment and it's very difficult to implement that as well. Lastly, we also see the lack of funding for improvements of buildings, the improvement of urban environments, the helping of people who are doing the groundwork. And we see that in the form of like where you have city improvement districts that do not, for example, bring in people who do not exist in the state apparatus, who are trying to push this agenda for just housing in the city of Johannesburg. Now this has impacts, this has effects on the physical environment of the city, right? So we see that this leads to housing shortages, a lot of overcrowding, which in some instances a lot of evictions and exclusions we see that in Jovek specifically you have poor living conditions, which in some instances can lead to fatalities, right? As we've seen with the Jovek fires last year. And this is also causing a lot of disruption in the social fabric that leads to things like crime, you know, bad living conditions, health conditions and so on. Thank you, Alexis, for now. Thank you, Sufis. So that's really clear again and highlighting many issues that I can already hear some parallels, Ricardo, with the Brazilian experience in some way, you know? Maybe could you draw some reflections from Sao Paulo when you're hearing the colleagues from Johannesburg? What does it trigger you in terms of some of the policy and practice bottlenecks in Sao Paulo? Hello, everyone. Thank you, Alex and everyone. Nice to be here. Well, we've had a big fire in the building in the inner city area of Sao Paulo six years ago. And after that, it was a big campaign trying to find where the risks are or, yeah? And it was a big fight because we are trying to show that instead of going into these buildings, 51 buildings in inner city area of Sao Paulo, to try to find where the risks were, it was more important to find what could be done to improve the security. It's like the opposite way to look at that. It was quite an interesting approach and they got to do it and it was an important victory. We got an important victory also to consolidate as a legal basis to put public money in private-owned buildings. We use it as a reflection that there are legal basis to put public money in informal settlements. So there's no impedities, there's no problem to put public money in housing units, private housing units in high-rise buildings. So we got to put it in the three, Brazilian has three federal instance with autonomy. It's a federal government, state government and local government. So we could prove that there are basis to put money on that. And then nowadays, the census has just been, the data has just been put on the media. So nowadays Sao Paulo in each five units in inner city areas, one of them is empty or abandoned. So we have lots and lots of abandoned buildings in Sao Paulo. And there's a big fight in order to put these buildings also to low-income people. The local government in Sao Paulo nowadays is a very, very conservative government. I don't know how to say, Alex can help me. It's an ultra-right government like ex-president, so it's quite a problem. Nowadays he announced big investments on buildings in the inner city area, something like just with investments like subsidies of about $200 million. But then what happens for each kind of building? What kind of building? Well, they are putting this money for head to feet, like you take everyone out of the building, then you make the change in the entire building, put it into the brand new standards of construction and then you sell them to the brand new, new rich of the city. Like they are not going to low-income groups. So we think it's like a safe who can pay, who can pay? It's a good solution for who can pay, but for low-income it's really a disaster. And so we are trying to show the big difference of this policy to one that put money to incremental improvements of buildings while people are living in it. So that is the moment we are dealing now, trying to show that head to feet that is going on is not enough, it's not good enough to have action, public actions in incremental improvements. Thank you, Alex. Thanks, Mikado. And yeah, thanks for demonstrating also how the retrofitting agenda is extremely desirable for market-led forces that are reproducing inequalities rather than opening up opportunities for dealing with the cities inequalities. So let's go to Saskia. Saskia, how does all of these relate to London? Could you tell us a little bit more from your experience? How does this agenda plays itself out in the London context? Yeah, thank you so much for inviting me to speak at this amazing meeting. I think I'm sorry to hear that actually the experiences that have already been talked about today are translated to London as well, although there are slightly different aspects. Public housing and social housing in London generally relates to estates. So I'm going to talk about housing estates. And in London, we have over 100 housing estates that are at threat of demolition. At the same time, we have an acute housing crisis, which I won't talk about now, but rather just point out that there is one. And we have communities like the communities I help who are fighting to stay in their homes and fighting to keep these estates standing. Even though the estates are in quite bad states of disrepair, we've already heard about disrepair. Well, we call it managed decline. Repair's not being done on these estates. And yet people are still fighting to keep them standing because they know if these estates are demolished, that means displacement. And it means displacement of communities not just from their area of London, but outside of London. And so people know that there are options for having some sort of permanent homes in London means keeping those homes on the estates. With an acute housing crisis, why are over 100 housing estates threatened with demolition? It doesn't seem to make sense unless you start to talk about the value of land. And the value of land in London is very, very high. What's also true in London and across our country is that many local councils are facing severe crisis in terms of their funding. Councils across our country are going bankrupt. And so what we've seen over a number of years is local authorities looking at their assets, their public assets, which includes council estates, these housing estates, and seeing how they can extract profit and extract capital from this public asset, which is housing, and how has that played out well? It's played out by local authorities either selling this is the estate, the public land off to private developers for very low prices actually in terms of the commercial landscape or local councils playing property developer themselves. So either selling it or doing it themselves. And the onus has majorly been on demolition. And we have to ask why? Well, we can discuss that today. One of the reasons that we are investigating is, for example, a VAT exemption, a tax exemption when buildings are fully demolished. It's cheaper. So there seems to be a financial incentive behind it. Additionally, you can obviously build higher. It's easier to build more private land on those estates. I wanted to also touch on what happens to low income Londoners who live on estates or around estates when those estates are demolished. What policy is there to protect them? Well, we do have policy around affordable housing in this country and in London. But the starting point is that the term affordable is quite ambiguous. And there's a lot of battles around what is affordable housing and lots of categories. And it's extremely confusing. But essentially the policy that we do have that says that affordable housing should be re-provided on these estates, the type of housing products they're talking about are to address the housing crisis for middle income Londoners, which is very key. So what we're seeing in London is not a solution presented to low income Londoners, but a solution presented to middle income Londoners who are also being pushed out. That's how acute the housing crisis is. I'm not going to go into too much more detail on that now, but I also, of course, wanted to touch on the issue and policies around retrofit and around retention in this country and why the onus is on demolition. Well, we actually had quite an interesting, I'll call it interesting, it's not great, but we had an interesting case that came to the High Court recently in the last few weeks, specifically looking at the policies that exist in our country around retention as opposed to demolition with the background being the environmental damage caused by demolition. And unfortunately our High Court confirmed that actually there's no actual policy that says we prefer retention over demolition. And if I just pull it up now, let me get my wee notes. Yeah, there's no strong presumption in favour of repurposing and reusing buildings. And that actually it's just preferred but in a very light way. So we have no clear policy that favours that whatsoever. And so actually that High Court challenge was really damaging in terms of that fight and that battle. I will just finish and I'm happy to keep speaking on any of these points, but I'll just finish in on any other type of housing for low income Londoners. And again, this is really relatable to what's already been talked about. For Londoners who rent privately, there are no protections in terms of rent control. There are no protections currently in terms of no fault evictions. There is talk of some legislation, it is not here yet. And there is a horrific emergency in terms of temporary accommodation. And again, I've already heard this word in the meeting, but so many people across London, so many children, so many families are living in precarious, overcrowded, unsafe temporary accommodation. And in fact, as housing campaigners, we call that the new social housing is this temporary accommodation. And I'll leave it there. Saskia, thanks for this input and also highlighting how the housing crisis is a global crisis happening in so many different places across the world. And I think also the question around incentives that you bring up is, you know, it's not only about policy and policy frameworks, but if the incentives are not there, if they're contradictory to the actual policy frameworks, that might be there, then we have a problem that's actually the practice of it won't be in line with some of the policy interests. So yeah, thanks for bringing incentives into the question. Now let's go into actions and let's go back to South Africa and to Johannesburg and Lauren. Tell us about the actions that residents, community organizations support NGOs that are taking, you know, to challenge this issue and trying to make progress around this agenda. Thanks, Alex, and hello again. I would like to talk briefly about the relationships between three organizations in the inner city. The series is one of them. And then the inner city federation is a group, is a federation of building committees in occupied buildings and rental accommodation, which I can talk a little bit more about if you'd like, and then one to one. So firstly, the way that series works is we have three methods or tools at our disposal, litigation, research and advocacy. So when it comes to litigation, there's been a great deal in the city of Johannesburg that has provided important case law precedent around what needs to happen with evictions. So there's a sense that you can't evict anyone, but you can, you have to follow a lawful procedure though. So the evictions have been a key aspect of the litigation work that we do. So have disconnections. So the context in Johannesburg is that there are a range of different topologies, if you like, of these buildings that have been abandoned or have become derelict. Some of them are owned by the municipality and are meant to be managed by the Johannesburg property company. Some of them are owned by social housing institutions and some of them are privately owned. So there's variety there. And what happens is that there are frequent disconnections of services. So many buildings, and I believe Spiesel will talk more about this, many buildings are very precarious in terms of safety and health and access to basic services. When it comes to research, we've worked very closely with the inner city federation. For example, in developing what we call a community practice note, which is a publication which charts the history of the inner city federation since its establishment and outlines the strategies and tactics that it employs. And a research product like this is meant to boost the inner city federation in its own eyes as well as providing examples to other social movements and community-based organizations about what can be done. And then advocacy critically in this context is there's three aspects. The one is media advocacy, which is trying to shift a narrative in the media which is really about how these buildings need to be either demolished or emptied of who lives in them because they are the homes of criminals, drug trade, syndicates and have been taken over essentially. So it's a complex narrative and I'm happy to talk more about what those different interests are in discussion. The other aspect of our advocacy work is community-related advocacy, which is where we employ methods of popular education to raise rights awareness amongst the people that we work with. When it comes to policy advocacy, this is really difficult. I mentioned that we do have a very good and internationally recognized constitutional and legal framework, but there is at a municipal level, there are some problems with the policies and particularly with the implementation. How do you go about trying to shift policies and trying to move towards implementation of existing policies? That's one of our key questions and the sand is shifting for us. There used to be many opportunities to engage the state at a local level and at a national level on the kinds of policy changes and implementation challenges that need to be addressed. With the fire in Albert Street last year, there has been a real shrinkage in the space that is available to undertake policy advocacy. We also are in an elections year, national elections in South Africa are taking place in May. And as a result, there's a lot of political discourse around the inner city, some of which is deeply problematic. When it comes to the inner city federation, the inner city federation does its own work independently of CERI. So for example, if there's a disconnection in a building, the inner city federation is able to represent people, take some cases to court and calls on CERI in cases where professional litigation and legal services are required. That litigation is demand led, so we respond to requests from the inner city federation and we are not the only legal services provider whom the inner city federation refers cases to. With one to one, CERI can bring research, advocacy and litigation expertise. The ICF brings mobilization, organization, awareness raising expertise. With one to one, we've got an exciting partnership underway, the three organizations on data, which CERI know we'll talk about. The importance of the partnership with one to one is the technical expertise that they are able to bring, because we can't do that. So, Alex, I think I should stop there. Sorry, Lauren, to be trying to interrupt you. But CERI, I think Laura made a great introduction. Could you pick it up from there? Thank you, Alex. Thank you, Lauren. Yes, as Lauren has said, we focus a lot on supporting. So we work together, as Lauren has said, with ICF and CERI, and we bring in that technical support, specifically in this specific project with data. So what we have done is we've worked with ICF who have mobilized the community members and the leaders of those buildings to go into those buildings and capture data for us to help us understand what is going on in those abandoned buildings and what are the challenges being faced in those abandoned buildings. And Alex, can I please show my screen? I would like to just show some of the work. Yes, go ahead. I think you can share a screen, no? All right, thank you. Can everyone see my screen? Yes. Okay, so ICF, they have building leaders who go into the city and they go and use the technology that we've built, which is a mobile survey that they load onto their phone. They go into the city and they collect and analyze and audit the buildings to see what the issues are in those buildings. So these range from the physical aspects of challenges and risks. So for example, if you can see here on the images, you can see that there's things like flooding, the electric wires hanging above the water, which can be hazardous. There's environmental issues like the lack of refuse removal services, and then there's also structural issues like buildings, staircases and so on. So what we do then is we take this data that comes from the field, and then we've built a dashboard that then represents the data in a spatial format that our members, that our team members in ICF and Siri can then access and view this data as it comes in from the field. And then you'll have an understanding of the people living in the building. So in the top right, in the top here, you can see some of the key statistics of the people we've actually asked questions to. And then you can also see some of the audits of the buildings like the services and the infrastructure would not condition it in. Thank you. I will stop sharing. Thank you, Alex. All right, great, Cephiso. Thanks for showing that. And yeah, it's incredible how the power of data and information and how that can feed into the protection and the advancement of housing justice in the city. So thanks for bringing that up. Ricardo, how is that compared to the kind of actions and responses by community social movements and support networks in Sao Paulo? Could you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, well, there's a very strong housing movements towards central areas in Sao Paulo. It's not the same in Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro now, in just a little few years has grown very, very much the building occupation. There's something like 40,000 people living in central buildings, occupied buildings in Rio de Janeiro, but they are not so well-organized as they are in Sao Paulo, the social movements. Well, the social movement got an important conquest that was, let's say, zero eviction during COVID time. So during some years, it was no eviction. No eviction was allowed, so it was quite an important. Also in the law questions, there are some very progressive judges but they are few, but some of them ask at them, I asked them to develop a handbook about technical inspections in occupied buildings. This handbook brings that notion that instead of trying to find where the risk is, trying to find what we can do to improve the quality. It was quite important, because his handbook was sent to all the judges. So this idea of looking to the building and trying to get the security improvement was quite an important step. Well, the community groups now develop these incremental improvements in a very, very nice way. Many, many groups now have a very small amount of money are getting some important improvements of security. There's one case I just logged that was one very high building, many, many people would buy something like 4,000 people were living there, had a fire. And in this building, there was a formation of fire brigades and during that action of looking what possibilities to improve security. And this brigade was very well prepared in the volunteer work of, how do you say, Bomberu Alex, fire, firemen. It's fire fighters, fire fighters. Yeah, fire fighters. So a fire fighter, a civil fire fighter has voluntary format, a brigade in the building and the fire happened, but no one got hurt and was quite a victory that showed that this kind of small improvements, many times without so much amount of money can be quite important. Well, but not so many victories. It's a big fight every day and the movements all the time are trying to be criminalized and the stigma, the stigmatization as Lauren has just said is the same, all the time trying to show that the drug and problem all the time just looking at the problem, not the solutions. But one important thing that is happening now is that the social movements in the occupied buildings are nowadays, they have a group in the city council that discussing the public services, how to make the public service to become legal. This is happening in Sao Paulo and I think it's quite an important experience. But it's like that, some conquests but many, many, many problems and all the time trying to breathe. Thank you, thank you, Ricardo. I think the now conversations before the way that you're talking about building codes in an incremental way and I know you have done some work also comparing Sao Paulo and Porto around how can you frame building codes not as I standard that is unachievable but actually how you can engage with incremental practices that building codes can recognize that and support and build a pathway for this incrementality rather than creating standards that communities would never totally unachievable and taking away totally the agency in that process. So really interesting precedent there that I think we should really shed light and look more into detail and this combination between civil engineers and legal work is can be so powerful. Saskia, how is that related to London conversations and the actions that communities, movements, support organizations are doing? Thank you so much. I'm going to answer that question but I'm going to share a nice photo for you all to look at while answer the question which is a photo from outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London last year. Can you see that with a community who were bringing litigation to the High Court and we were successful? Oh, great. But actually what I wanted to pick up on which is some words you just used talking about the agency and not taking agency away from campaigners and at the practice that I'm in, the law center that I work for that is top of our agenda is not taking agency away and we do that by effectively trying to be movement lawyers and what do we mean by that? We mean that our prerogative is to support the aims of the campaign and crucially not to put the law on a pedestal and move it above any other tools of campaigning. We don't think the answer will come through the courts, we think the answer will come through residents and campaigners and so essentially what we're doing as lawyers is trying to handle a deeply conservative legal system and push it and fight with it to achieve campaigners' aims. So we've done that and we continue to do that in London and also in other parts of England. The photo that you're looking at is related to a massive estate in South London, it's called the Aylesbury estate. That estate has been threatened with demolition and some sort of redevelopment since the late 90s since I was about nine years old. So it's a very long running struggle but some of the people that you can see in that photograph and primarily the women in the middle of that photograph who's an incredible warrior woman called Isen Dennis, she has campaigned for all those years on her estate to make sure that she could stay in her home and the building stayed standing and that has encompassed all sorts through the years. It's encompassed occupations of the estate. So lots of protests, the arts, documentaries, theater productions and also the law now and we successfully litigated to halt demolition. I won't go into the details, they're highly technical but essentially to say it's a merge of all sorts that's happening that's pushing a housing movement forward. I'm gonna echo again what Ricardo just said about essentially it's one step forward and sometimes two steps back. And also looking at the chat, I think somebody from Glasgow, fellow Glaswegian, Eva wrote in the chat that it's a shame there isn't a harder, stronger policy in relation to the environment and retention. No, there isn't right now, but we can fight and push for it. So do not be kind of alarmed or upset. This is exactly what we're trying to do and you can always push things forward. But yeah, the question of agency for lawyers is a very important one, never to take agency away from campaigners, never to platform the law above the other methods of fighting and campaigning. I'll leave it there. Thank you, thank you, Saskia. Let me bring in some questions from the participants here, those that have joined us in the Zoom. One question from Desmond is, what do you think are the forces behind effective implementation? What can be done to navigate around lack of implementation of the laws and policies? That's one, why do you think about that about the forces behind effective implementation? There's another one that's more focused, it's directed to Lauren Cifiso by Marcel. You speak about local versus foreign dynamics in Johannesburg and comment how this impacts local government to assist in the delivery or reluctance of housing the inner city of Johannesburg. And just on the side, maybe Cifiso you can write in the chat, there's a question around the software that you use for the spatial landscape, maybe you can share that. But yeah, those key two very interesting questions. Maybe we start with the Desmond question and while maybe Lauren Cifiso think about it, maybe I can bring Ricardo, do you want to tackle that first question around what do you think are the forces behind effective implementation? That was very easy. Real estate no more, it's just one word. Yes, incredible. They have very strong interest in that. Look, the heterofit in inner city of Sao Paulo is very profitable. And about demolishing buildings, I have some pictures, I will send you Alex because we have buildings like 45 meters high being demolished to build other ones with 100 or 120 meters as they are more profitable. So it's unbelievable what is happening. It's money, money, money as a, and Russia in practice, they don't want to have low income people around. So it's a big fight as there's many, many forces against implementation, what a shame. Thank you, Cardinal. There is microflats, right? How many square meters there is? There's more one, but how much you pay for the rental is quite high. 19 square meters and Saskia, what do you think are some of these challenges of implementation in the London context? Yeah, I mean, one of the things that comes to mind is the revolving door between developers and people that work for the local authorities, which has been documented in London, which means that when, for example, big plans to demolish housing comes to the planning committee where they can make the decision, they just wait them through. And we say a couple of years down the line that those same people might then have positions in these large development firms. I'll post something in the chat about that. I mean, the other thing that's worth saying from a legal perspective is it is very, very hard for communities to access legal representation. It's very difficult. It's very difficult to get public funding in London for legal representation. So yeah, hopefully we're helping to address that, but we're very small. Thank you, Saskia. Maybe we go to Lauren and Cifiso. Cifiso, do you want to start tackling some of those questions and maybe picking up on this discussion between local and foreign dynamics in Johannesburg and how does it impacts local government's ability to assist in the delivery of housing or reluctance? Well, that's a very good question, Alex. And I'd like to preface this by saying South Africa has a history of some, I don't know how to put it, so I'll put it straight, some really bad xenophobia, and we've had some xenophobic attacks in the past. So I think we should handle this question with care and just nuance as well. I think first thing to notice is that the Constitution of South Africa does say that everyone's rights who reside in South Africa should be protected, regardless of their legal status. So we should start there, right? And then secondly, I'd like to say that when we went into the field and we collected data and we're asking questions to the residents of these, sorry, not hijacked, but rather occupied buildings, is that we found that it's actually a very small minority of illegal foreigners occupying these buildings. It's mostly South Africans. So there is that rhetoric that is not really supported by what we see in the data, by fact. So we have to be careful in that sense. And then I think, I mean, we need to have some empathy as well in terms of illegal foreigners are people regardless of their status. And they too, I think we should extend some grace in also providing services for them. So the city, I think the city must handle this with some nuance and empathy. Thank you, Sifiso. Lauren, do you want to have a take on one of all the other question? I would love to, thank you. So in terms of the lack of implementation, I'll just list a few things. And I think they probably repeat across these three different cities. Not wanting poor people around, not knowing who they actually are. You've got to follow the money to understand. So there's a whole lot to say about that. It's both developer and development, investment, but it's also alleged corruption. People, the next point is people must wait patiently. That means in South Africa, there's a housing subsidy program and the delivery figures have plummeted over the last few years and still the state says wait patiently in a queue. So people who occupy are seen as queue jumpers and it's a fallacy. It's a discourse that has very little grounding in reality because there really isn't a functional waiting list. And if where it does exist, there is male administration and corrupt allocation. We know this from project examples. The other factor I'd say is what it costs. So the model of social housing is not affordable for most of the people in occupation. The model is not incremental. It's as others have spoken about, you move people out, you upgrade the building. They can never come back because it's not affordable. There's a lack of political commitment which is linked to the wait patiently. And then there's xenophobia which makes the inner city an undesirable area to invest. And as Fiso said, it's also not based in fact. While there are migrants from the region living in occupation, in inner city buildings and in informal settlements, in projects we work on, it is by no means a majority. So sometimes the facts are just wrong. So the xenophobia Marcel, it's had a massive impact, on people and lawyers in my organization personally, on Siri and on our safety. So that's on our partner organizations who are not xenophobic, informal traders and the inner city federation. And it's led to a dumbing down and a lack of nuance around what the issues at stake are. Because you can write off the whole project because it's foreigners and they are illegal. You can write off the whole project because people living in these buildings are all criminals. And it's simply not the case. So we're calling for much closer attention to the people who live in occupation and to the actual conditions in buildings to not painting them all with the sandbar. Thanks. Thank you, Lauren. Yeah, and lots of solidarity here from many other groups also working on the ground and experiencing some of those challenges. And yeah, part of this dialogue is also about that, right? So sharing the experiences and being able to be solidarity with each other. And we have many very interesting people with a lot of experience here in the room with us. And I wanted to bring a couple of them in. Catherine, I think you asked a question. You're based on the University of Cape Town. You have worked with organizations like Violence Prevention through Urban Upgrading in Cape Town have been part of many of those dialogues around the issues in Johannesburg and Cape Town. Would you like to maybe make a comment or ask a question? And I think, Juliet, you're gonna help to maybe bring Catherine in. I think you can hear me. We can. Can you? Follow a little bit. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Quite low, but we can. Okay. So thank you very much. This is a fascinating conversation. It's really interesting to kind of hear the different perspectives from a global perspective and almost how similar some things are but nuanced to their contextual conditions. I mean, I'm speaking from an experience of very much in the informal settlement sector, which in Cape Town, about 10 years ago where we started looking at various different alternatives. And I really enjoyed that idea of the incremental improvements. And I was wondering if there's anything being kind of done in terms of sort of the more shared spaces or common spaces that can start working around sort of the ideas of safety and activated spaces. So we did a similar project where we looked at kind of the more public spaces. But so it was more the delivery of soft services that gave agency to community that started opening up different opportunities for recognition and tenure options. So I was kind of my head sort of going round and how do we actually do this in inner city Johannesburg where there may be similar conditions to crime and safety that I've dealt with in places like Google Earth and Niagara. But these are also spaces with amazing entrepreneurs and people involved in micro-businesses and there is different voices in there. So I suppose those conversations are all opening up. How do we actually move forward? How do we create pathways for change in this very complex world? Great. Thank you. Thank you, Catherine. Ricardo, do you want to come in because I know you wanted to make a point about a common good. And maybe there is something there around incremental improvements around the commons that you might want to bring in. Yeah. Today is Water Day. I think it's International Day, isn't it? Is Water Day also every place? I think it's an international event, isn't it? Well, I'm from Ondas, the national movement towards the right to water and sanitation. And we are fighting in order to affirm the right to water in informal settlements and occupied buildings. And what strategy we are using is making, trying to figure out what would happen if a person have put on an informal settlement that has an informal job, that has an informal car, that is drunk and hits his car against a wall and goes to a hospital. And then you are the doctor there. The question is, should you treat him or let him die? Look, he lives in an informal settlement, an informal job, an informal car, it's a drunk. And do you treat him or not? So if you are in the group that thinks that the doctor there in the hospital must treat him and avoid him to die. So I ask you, why do you think the public service of water could not be provided to an informal settlement? One is the right to life, so what? And water is the right to life. So we've got some advances in the sentence about to state that the water has to be provided, water and sanitation, even in informal settlements. We are trying to share this vision because I think this vision is powerful, help to, I would say, to fight for the narrative. Okay, thanks. Thanks, Mauritius. I think that is also the question around common experiences, I leave it there. I think there's Ivan Turak also makes a provocation here around the role of the private sector, is there a way of engaging, understanding that the private sector is very diverse, we have very different types of private sector, small scale, large scale, so I'm sure lots of possibilities there. But let's go for a final round of just inputs from all the panelists. In terms of what is ahead, what is for you the next stop, what is that it's keeping you awake at night now in terms of the things you're doing and that you're trying to get different alliances and initiatives. So please, yeah, let's go for that. And then if any of those questions instigate you to address them, and let's start with Saskia. Saskia, what is in your mind right now? So much, no, probably not enough. I mean, look, in our country, we're gonna have a general election, probably in October, and in the general election, we're expecting massive changes in planning, so that directly affects these housing estates and homes for low income people and Londoners. And what we're expecting is a further deregulation of planning and mass house building, but again, aimed at creating homes for middle income Londoners. So we don't particularly see that as a positive thing because it's, again, the question of narrative that I just heard. And what is in my head and what's kind of pushing me ahead is to reclaim the narrative that actually there are enough homes to house people. We do not have a problem that means we need to build homes. There are enough homes. As I've said already, there are over 100 housing estates, there are a demolition, and so that's a very, very, very powerful message. And the other thing that I wanted to point out is that there is fantastic work going on from communities that are putting together alternative plans with amazing architects. There's a bit of trouble in terms of making those financially viable, but people are pushing forward all the time and it's going to produce results. Also, I think one of the main things for me in terms of hopefully as achieving results as we go forward is bringing in to the conversation at all times, those families, those adults and children in temporary accommodation who aren't necessarily on the estates, but they traditionally would have been housed on those estates and it's about bringing everyone into the battle and everyone into the realm of fighting to keep those homes standing and to refurbish them. Great, thank you, Saskia. You made me think of a sentence that was quite powerful politically in the Brazilian context that says that there are more homes without people than people without homes. And yeah, lots of interesting campaigns putting stickers here that could be a family living with the images of the family. I know that Housing Rebellion was doing something similar in Brazil. There was many campaigns around that, so a really important narrative there. Let's go to South Africa. Lauren, what's in your mind and what's keeping you awake right now and what's the next for you? Right, thank you, Alex. So, I want to say that, firstly, let me start with what's on my mind. This has been an incredibly useful exchange for us. So, regarding the production of affordable public and social rental and private rental, Ivan, I don't know if Ivan's still on the call. I wanted to say to that point that I think, Ivan, we have to segment the market and be realistic about where the private sector can provide and where it can't. So, that was a side point. The London experience is really interesting for us in this respect. And then we've been saying for a while that something else is needed, something different. We've named it an incremental approach. This is in conversations with one-to-one, for example, and with architects without borders. And the Sao Paulo experience here is really important. And what one-to-one does and supports that is already happening on the ground. I think that what I would also say is that it's really important that we look at what strategies and tactics are currently being employed by people who live in occupation. We would call those local management practices. Unfortunately, the hijacking narrative paints all occupations with the same brush. So, you can't really discuss local management in the current climate, but that's where agency exists. And unfortunately, if relocation happens, then these local management systems are destroyed. I've seen it at close range in one building in particular over 15 years. So, in terms of the next steps, number one, emergency basic services to all occupied buildings. Number two, categorization, planning. Categorize the buildings. We do this in the informal settlement program. Relocation now, because people can't stay, although they have been living there for a very long time. Relocation in due course, because there's not a long-term future, but there's not an imminent danger. And then incremental upgrade where people can stay. And the incremental approach is something that I think we can learn from based on what people are currently doing, but where they need support from the state or the private sector, essentially to make places more livable over an incremental period of time. The other element of this would be doing an audit of vacant buildings in the inner city of Johannesburg, of which there are many. And then the permanent affordable accommodation supply, the temporary relocation supply that can then start to come together. It's a distant dream, but an important dream nevertheless, that we would not have to talk about temporary alternative accommodation if people become homeless as a result of eviction. But we aren't there yet. So we have to have a long-term vision. Final point, we have a very important process underway in Johannesburg at the moment called the Compepe Commission of Inquiry into the Fire. The commission is looking into the specifics of that single fire in August last year, but its remit in part B includes a more general look at what's going on in the inner city. And we can do nothing but be hopeful. That's something will come out of this, and that is for the good. Thank you. Thank you, Lauren. Sifisu, what's next for you in one-to-one? Thank you, Alex. Thank you, everyone. This has been very great experiences. It's quite interesting to hear the parallels between what's happening in Brazil and South Africa. There's a lot in common. And also importantly, it was interesting to hear what is happening with the challenges in London, right? You would assume that the provision of social housing is sometimes used as a silver bullet that if it's there, then the problem solved. But as Sascha has shown us today, that there are still issues even when there is supply, right? And then from us, I think from our side, what we will continue doing and looking forward is we want to continue with our knowledge production in terms of data connection and monitoring. We want to expand the scope of the buildings we've been auditing, so to audit more buildings than we currently are at the moment. We want to explore more technical innovation in this space to try and bring in more software technology to support not just ourselves, but our partners, the residents, and everyone is involved in this sector. And then we want to use that knowledge generator to continue to incrementally improve the buildings and also just keep on shining the spotlight on the fact that these tall buildings, these structures, as Lauren has said, should also be given the same level of attention and urgency that is given to what we traditionally consider informal settlements on the outskirts, right? Because that's where you have legal tools and policies and so on that support that and have a strategy for that, but there isn't really anything to support those tall buildings in the inner city that should also, I think, in my personal opinion, be considered informal settlements as well. Thank you. Thank you, Cephisto. Moreci, Ricardo, from Sao Paulo, what's next? From your experience, from your work for La Bijuta for the work that you are doing there with social housing movements. Well, I do agree with Cephisto. And there's a big challenge to have public policies and money towards occupied building just as we have now for informal settlements. So it's a challenge too. I do agree with you, Cephisto. Well, we have some fights that are quite clear, right? Against eviction, against demolition, against criminalization of housing movements and a big fight to ask the city to for public service in the occupied buildings. So this is a very, very big effort. But then there are some technical things. I think we need to go through the technical and law standards, law for incremental improvement. Here in Brazil, this is very, very weak, very weak nowadays. And then we think here in Brazil, we need to think how to take money to be managed directly by housing movements in occupied buildings. It's quite easier for the federal government to put 200 millions in a project than to put a million in a building. There are many difficulties. So there's intention to put money in these buildings, but the path is not easy. So we are trying to find ways, legal ways to put money directly into the movements. And also we need money to technical assistance to incremental improvement. Nowadays, there are some technical support, but then the money comes from architecture association, they think like that. And it's very little amount of money. So we should put it in really as a public policy. So this is a challenge that we are trying to reach. I think it's that. And also I would like to, everyone could be happy, is that enough? Everyone, happiness to everyone. Wonderful, Ricardo, thank you so much. And connecting a bit what Lauren was saying about local management systems. And I know also ongoing conversations from a more local government perspective. I know that we have colleagues here from United Cities and local governments in the call. How public services is a very interesting entry point here, possibility for coalitions. And there has been so many efforts, I think to build a more popular approach to public and civil society partnerships, commons oriented. So how those types of partnerships can emerge between local governments and communities, civil society, support organizations in ways that they can be supported and operating services with communities on the ground. I think there could be a lot of possibilities there for a more clear agenda of collaboration and conversation, particularly with local governments to try to make a way in that front. Now, we are now coming to an end of our seminar, but before we go, we'd like to bring in Beatriz De Cali who is gonna explain to us what is this journey that we are having together and how this network is collaborating with, with, I mean, IID, ASF UK, with SETI, one to one, how this collaboration has been evolving and what's gonna happen next. Beatriz, do you want to share with us your thoughts and all you have some slides as well? Yes, thank you. Just a moment. Can you see the screen? Yes, we can. Great, thanks. And thank you, everyone, really for the excellent discussion. I've always learned a lot from these conversations. And just to put ourselves in context a bit as I should to do some frontier, ASF UK is a non-profit organization. We are based in the UK and our specialism is our own community led design and planning. So we use design and planning tools as a means to contribute to creating fair cities and more just environments for people to live in. And our work has several distinct areas but amongst what has been bringing together so to these conversations and some of these partners is our Change by Design program. And Change by Design has been, is one of our longest standing lines of work and it has been using community led design and planning as a way to advance questions of justice but really most of all to deepen public participation and deepen conversations around questions of urban decision making, urban management and planning. So we really through this program we use design as a way of thickening and deepening some of the conversations around how we can create cities that are more equitable. So as part of Change by Design since 2022 we have been actively engaged in a series of collaborative action research projects in Johannesburg. And the focus of this has been very much around the topics that we were discussing today and on thinking about together with a quite broad range of partners how we can promote housing justice in inner city areas with a very strong focus on thinking about residents of informally occupied buildings. So through this line of work we have been working with one to one who's been our partner like with whom we've worked for about 10 years on a range of different projects. And we've been working closely with with Sarah more recently and other partners to promote their innovation of inner city buildings as a means of providing secure and affordable housing. IID has been a key research and policy partner in this work. And as discussed today together we've been seeing this approach as a means to decrease urban inequalities by improving access to areas that are well-serviced for low income communities. So what this has been translating into in practice is that we've been running a series of action learning workshops that have been used in our change by design methodology to produce planning and design options and possibilities for retrofitting informally occupied or vacant buildings. And we have been running these workshops by working alongside grassroots organizers some of the organizations that have been mentioned today the inner city forum, inner city research center. And in this process we've been creating a range of accessible learning materials because we find that this focus on learning is really crucial to support both professional and grassroots engagement in collaborative planning processes. So there is an example of this is this multilingual guide to the I2 adequate housing which we have published just a couple of weeks ago that is now available in English and Suthu and the Zulu version will become available next week. And through this series of engagement then we are landing on a final one or final by on the next workshop in April. And the next step for this work would be this co-design and workshop in Johannesburg where we are aiming really to help envision and imagine a number of approaches and tools for it to fit in and maintaining inner city buildings and for doing so in a way that ensures the I2 adequate housing for low-income residents. So this is work that you have been supporting and where is FUK, one-to-one CERI and the inner city federation and inner city research center will be carrying out towards the end of the month. So the event today was for as a really important grounding of this conversation within a broader debate. So thank you for hosting us. Thank you, Bea. And yeah, thanks for those inputs and also to share the road ahead and the next steps. We're really looking forward to the engagement now in Johannesburg and further collaborations. I know that in the chat is full of exchanges which is great and Lorena Zárate, a colleague from the global platform for the right to the city. As mentioned here, for example, if there are experiences of inner city building improvement programs and I think there's, I think room there for a collection of cases of trying to, I know that the Brazilian government just launched a program around rehabilitating buildings in inner city areas for housing of social interest. So lots of interesting, I think possibilities there to also share maybe innovations or good practices in this field. So yeah, I think that's the end of our call and of a fantastic conversation for today but definitely not the end of these conversations around housing justice. We will continue to be promoting this type of work for my idea in collaboration of all of you here and those that are attending. We hope to be doing more noise around this together. And so watch out, please join our activities and let's also build the joint agendas, advocacy, learning and research initiatives around this topic. We're really looking forward to working more with all of you on this and I hope you all have a good weekend. And yeah, good luck. See you next time, bye-bye. Thank you, Alex. I thank you, Alex and everyone, good weekend. Thanks, everyone, all the best.