Description
Housing affordability is one of the most acute social problems in Hungary: 63.4% of people living under the poverty line had some kind of housing debt in 2013, by which we have gained the worst position among the European Union member countries. We are going to implement a 2 day street action at a busy public space in Budapest. Our goal is to raise public awareness about housing affordability issues and to influence decision makers to develop inclusive and equitable housing policies. The program’s expected impact is that we will be able to reach out to around one and a half million people and increase the visibility of the housing affordability problems as well as their solutions. We will create a street installation, where we invite people to watch videos about people affected by housing poverty, to play a game, look at our info-graphics, invite stake holders and celebrities, run a media campaign and send out press releases. We hope to reach and sensitize hundreds of people through an interactive online game. We additionally plan to hold a thematic workshop, a public panel talk a couple of weeks after the street event. We are also going to organize lobby meetings with relevant decision-makers. We hope that the ultimate beneficiaries of our campaign will be those 500 000 people, who are likely to be negatively affected by recent policy changes in housing benefit and debt management. We cooperate with volunteers, partners and celebrities.
Summary of project results
In March 2015, the government eliminated the normative housing subsidy and the debt-management service. As a reaction to these changes, Habitat for Humanity Hungary (HFH) launched an advocacy campaign with the goal of raising awareness about the problem of housing affordability. A street action was organized on the World Habitat Day in early October in Budapest. As part of this, a house-installation was placed at a busy public space and an audiovisual exhibition was organized to presents stories about how elimination of the subsidies affected the lives of people living in housing poverty. HFH also launched a public consultation, where people could send postcards to the Hungarian government. Around 300 people were involved in the event. Next, HFH launched a sensitizing online game to raise public awareness about the various housing situations that low-income families experience (through the characters of the game) to point out that most state and municipality subsidies do not help those families who are in dire need. The online game gained relatively wide media coverage. More than 40 000 viewers clicked at the website of the game, the number of participants who completed the whole game is around 2500 (measured by Google Analytics). Altogether, HFH organized five lobby meetings with government and municipality officials, where the organization presented its recommendations. The campaign did not result in concrete policy changes. HFH continues to lobby and to pressure the government.
Summary of bilateral results