Housing and Accommodation Rights: Lessons from the Grassroots

Through workshops and plenary sessions, activists will identify and share key lessons from their change-making work and discuss what it takes for global promises of rights to be made real in people’s lives.

In the current political climate, with fundamental human rights protections under further attack from the dominant voices promoting Brexit, the Trump administration and the growth of the European far-right, the need to explore how change can be built from the ground up has never been greater.

 Ten years ago, Participation and the Practice of Rights (PPR) launched its flagship housing campaign with residents of the Seven Towers high rise flats in North Belfast. Since then, PPR have worked with communities across the island of Ireland and in Scotland to assert their right to housing.

Homeless families, destitute asylum seekers, Irish Travellers, tenants and support organisations from Dublin and Edinburgh and elsewhere, have worked with PPR to make their housing rights real and have their voices heard in decisions that affect their lives. Housing and Accommodation Rights: Lessons from the Grassroots will feature workshops exploring these campaigns (see descriptions below).

 Through the Social Change Initiative's Fellowship programme, PPR activists have also had the privilege of witnessing other innovative work happening across the globe such as Reclaim the City in South Africa and the Nehemiah Project which has built 6,000 homes in areas of deprivation in New York. The conference will hear from organisers of these campaigns.

Renowned rights activist Bernadette McAliskey will deliver the conference's keynote address.

Register here 

Morning workshops

Workshop 1 Consultation and power – engaging with the state 

The main way the state engages with grassroots groups is through consultation structures. Yet the limited power these structures have lead many marginalised groups to express frustration at the lack of progress and complain of tokenism. This workshop will consider the example of the consultation structures developed by government to involve Travellers in decision-making, what power they have, and the steps Travellers are taking to move outside of them and hold the state to account.

Participants: Travellers of North Cork, Clondalkin Travellers and others

 or

 Workshop 2 Building Alliances for Change: A Scottish Example 

Since 2014, PPR have been working in partnership with Edinburgh Tenants Federation and the Scottish Human Rights Commission to support tenants from Leith to adopt a human rights based approach to long standing housing problems. Contrasting with the experience of residents from the Seven Towers, within six months of monitoring Edinburgh Council announced a massive refurbishment programme which should address many of the issues being monitored by residents. This workshop will look at the issues facing the tenants, the group’s tactics, the state’s response and the power of alliances.

Participants: Edinburgh Tenants Federation, Scottish Human Rights Commission

Afternoon workshops

Workshop 3 Generating Political Will

It is becoming increasingly clear that while homelessness and inequality grow, solutions to the housing crisis exist. Vacant housing, unoccupied second homes, under-utilised land, legislative powers to curtail landlord powers, available finances and new models of low income sustainable housing – all could be turned into positive solutions if political will existed. This workshop will examine tactics and strategies employed in dynamic campaigns in both Dublin and Belfast

Participants: Equality Can’t Wait (Belfast) and others 

 or

 Workshop 4 Asserting rights when you are denied legal rights

Asylum policy and legislation in the UK and Ireland renders asylum-seekers as ‘non-persons’. When the state denies and frustrates rights which apply to all human beings, regardless of immigration or status or nationality, it is necessary to develop innovative and effective methods of creating new frameworks. Focusing on  campaigns against Direct Provision, and housing for destitute and refused asylum seekers , this workshop will explore how asylum seekers and supporters have used direct action, , alliance building, complaints mechanisms, lobbying and legislative change to when your very presence in the state is considered unlawful.

Participants: Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland (MASI), Housing4All

 “The first row, the first shout, has to come from you. Because if you don’t say you matter, no one else will”

Inez McCormack, 1943-2013 

Feminist, trade unionist, human rights activist and founder of Participation and the Practice of Rights (PPR)