Financing innovative housing solutions

Benjamin Angel has been with the European Commission for more than two decades. He served in the cabinets of several European Commissioners for Economic and Monetary Affairs (Yves-Thibault de Silguy, Pedro Solbes and Joaquin Almunia). Angel also held positions in the services in charge of economic and financial affairs and more recently, taxation. He is currently Director for Direct Taxation, Tax Coordination, Economic Analysis and Evaluation and acting Director for Indirect Taxation and Tax Administration.

Corinne Aubin-Vasselin works as a director at Metropolitan Lyon, a local authority which brings together 59 municipalities and 1.3 million inhabitants in the region of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes in France. She previously worked for 15 years in two structures of social housing, before joining Metropolitan Lyon in 2014. In her current position, Aubin-Vasselin oversees the department of housing, which notably seeks to finance social housing and strengthen access to housing.

Tom Bennett founded the Housing First Transition Fund through which he provides short-term secured loans to homeless charities and housing associations in Glasgow. He previously worked as Investment Director for Big Society Capital, an independent financial institution which aims to improve the lives of people by connecting social investment to charities and social enterprises. In this role, he headed up a £250m housing investment portfolio and developed housing investment strategies across the UK.

Monica Brezzi oversees the technical preparation and implementation of projects at the Council of Europe Development Bank. She previously worked as Head of the OECD Territorial Analysis and Statistics Unit, where she led the work on measuring well-being in cities and regions. Prior to joining the OECD in 2008, she worked at the Italian Ministry of Economic Development, where she launched a performance-based policy to improve the quality of local public services for underserved populations.

Javier Buron Cuadrado oversees housing policies in the city of Barcelona. Prior to this position, he worked as a consultant in public policy and the housing market, as well as in administration reform and new forms of public-private management. Buron Cuadrado also served as Undersecretary for Housing and Planning Director of the Basque Government and worked as a legal counsellor in the Basque Parliament and Spanish Congress.

In his current position, Marko Canovic is responsible for the implementation of the 2017-2020 Social Housing Programme in Montenegro. He previously worked as an Election Monitoring Expert for the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations (ENEMO) as well as for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Canovic also led the Centre for Democratic Transition, a non-governmental organisation which strives to promote democracy in Montenegro.

Gilles de Warren works at Adoma, a social housing operator managing 72,000 housing units for vulnerable groups, which is now the leader for accommodating and assisting asylum-seekers in France. Since 2000, he has successively worked as Territorial Director in Mulhouse, Metz and Bordeaux, and as Deputy Regional Director for Ile-de-France until his current nomination as Director for Customer and Maintenance, where he monitors the operating network of Adoma’s facilities.

Lieve Fransen chairs the working group on “investment needs in social infrastructure” of the High-level Task Force on Social Infrastructure. This task force chaired by former European Commission President Romano Prodi aims to publish recommendations to promote the financing of social infrastructure by the end of 2017. Fransen previously worked for the European Commission where she served as Director for Social Policies of the Europe 2020 Strategy.

Ken Gibb is professor of urban studies at the University of Glasgow School of Social and Political Sciences. He is also Director of the Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence, a multidisciplinary partnership, which aims to take a housing systems approach to produce evidence and new research in order to improve housing policy and practice across the UK. His research interests are focused on the economic, financial and policy dimensions of housing.

Juha Kaakinen has worked in public administration of the City of Helsinki, as a researcher, consultant and CEO of Social Development Ltd, a company devoted to developing social and health services for cities and municipalities and as a Program Leader of a National Program to End Long-term Homelessness. He is now Chief Executive of Y-Foundation, the biggest Finnish NGO providing housing for homeless people and social housing with a housing stock of 16700 flats. He is internationally known as an advocate of Housing First policy.

At Eurocities, Agata Krause seeks to facilitate knowledge exchange between cities and to support evidence-based policymaking. She is particularly interested in housing construction, housing finance and housing governance, but also in homelessness, environmental benchmarking and urban regeneration. Krause has recently run a series of workshops on housing and land management, long-term investment in affordable housing and the right to housing.

Crtomir Remec leads the Housing Fund of the Republic of Slovenia, a public financial and real estate fund established to finance and implement the National Housing Programme, stimulating construction, maintenance and renovation of housing and residential buildings. He previously worked at the Steel Construction Institute and at the CBS Institute, where he gained extensive professional and management experience in the field of prefabricated and energy-efficient building.

Stepan Ripka currently chairs the Platform for Social Housing, a coalition of 65 NGOs and experts, which aims to end homelessness through social housing in the Czech Republic. He is also a Research Team Leader at the University of Ostrava, where he is developing and implementing a randomised control trial of rapid re-housing of 50 homeless families in Brno, the second largest city in the Czech Republic. Ripka previously worked as a country expert for the European Commission and the World Bank.

Chiara Rizzica is responsible for coordinating international partnership projects at Fondazione Housing Sociale, a foundation which experiments in innovative solutions for financing, managing and structuring economically-sustainable social housing initiatives. She is currently running through the scouting of new social housing projects to be realised within the Integrated System of Funds, the Italian funding platform for social and affordable housing.

Orna Rosenfeld is a senior housing expert teaching at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po) since 2013. An architect by training, she designed and assisted in the delivery of over 6,000 affordable homes before dedicating herself to counselling and researching the advancement of affordable and social housing policies. Among other publications, she is the author of the flagship study “Social Housing in the UNECE Region: Models, Trends and Challenges”.

In her current position, Rosa Sanchez-Yebra oversees the social development strategy of the Council of Europe Development Bank, a multilateral development bank, which aims to promote social cohesion and strengthen social integration in Europe. Sanchez-Yebra previously served as Secretary-General of the Treasury and Financial Policy in Spain, in which capacity she represented the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness in financial fora such as the G-20 and served as Deputy Minister at the Eurogroup.

Jean-Pierre Schaefer is an expert on housing economics and housing markets at the French Council of the Cities, which aims to advise the government on urban social development in France. He was previously in charge of economic studies at the Caisse des Dépôts and member of the board of directors of several housing companies. Among other publications, he is the author of the article “Latest trends in social housing finance policies in France” published in Housing Finance International.

Frederik Spinnewijn is director of FEANTSA, a European umbrella of NGOs working with homeless people in 30 European countries, which aims to end homelessness in Europe. Before joining FEANTSA in 2001, Spinnewijn led a European network of seniors’ organisations. He sits on the boards of several European organisations such as the European Anti-Poverty Network (EAPN), the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA) and Social Services Europe.

After a first experience in the public education sector responsible for urban policy issues, Cédric Van Styvendael joined the firm Habitat et Territoires Conseil, focusing on issues of urban management and renewal. He previously worked as Managing Director of Villeurbanne Est Habitat and as General Director of Est Métropole Habitat. In 2015, Van Styvendael joined the Board of Housing Europe, a network of 45 regional and national federations gathering 43,000 housing providers in 24 countries.

Branislava Zarkovic leads the Housing Development Center for Socially Vulnerable Groups, a non-profit organisation, which seeks to improve the living conditions of socially vulnerable groups in Serbia. An architect by training, Zarkovic previously worked as a consultant and researcher in the field of housing for vulnerable groups and on displaced persons and refugee issues related to housing, institutional discrimination, integration and poverty alleviation.