Provocations to advance housing justice
The Hub for Housing Justice launches its first series of publications to inspire and nurture housing justice efforts.
Housing Justice Provocations Series (Photo: Hub for Housing Justice/IIED)
A new series of provocations captures experiences, reflections, lessons and recommendations from housing justice activists across the world.
The series, published by the Hub for Housing Justice, highlights how applying a ‘justice lens’ offers a key opportunity to transform housing systems.
The Hub for Housing Justice is a collaborative initiative led by a group of civil society networks and research organisations that seeks to advance housing justice by co-designing agendas, sharing resources, aligning advocacy efforts and promoting learning and action across different contexts. IIED currently holds the secretariat of the hub.
A collaborative journey
The four-part Housing Justice Provocations Series is the result of a collective exploration of the propositions of the hub's housing justice approach. In 2025, partners and key allies of the hub organised into working groups. Through virtual exchanges, they explored what each proposition means for them, and how they could provide a framework for action to drive housing justice agendas.
The resulting publications reflect the outcomes of these discussions and encourage new ideas and strategies to promote anti-discriminatory, radically democratic, sustainable and caring housing futures.
“This has been an energising experience, expanding the meaning of the housing justice propositions, building bridges across civil society networks and organisations,” said Alexandre Apsan Frediani, principal researcher at IIED and co-convener of the Hub for Housing Justice, about the development of the provocations.
What are the provocations?
The provocations capture experiences, reflections, lessons and recommendations from housing justice activists, researchers and practitioners in Brazil, South Africa, the UK, Italy, Nepal and beyond.
For each proposition, listed below, the provocations showcase how applying a ‘justice lens’ offers a key opportunity to transform housing systems.
- Transforming life stories – why we need anti-discriminatory housing policies and practice, and how we can get there: the impacts of discriminatory housing policy and practice are not abstract but grounded in real-life experiences. The fictionalised stories represent real ways in which discriminatory housing shapes people’s life outcomes and propose tangible steps that can be taken towards making anti-discriminatory housing a reality.
- Radically democratic housing in hard times: a newly developed glossary offers an entry point into key ideas around radically democratic housing, linking different approaches, practices and concepts for democratising housing and democratising through housing.
- Housing as infrastructure for more caring, fairer and sustainable cities and human settlements: by describing the social and ecological functions of housing, the provocation explores why housing is the infrastructure that cities and human settlements need to function and how to connect housing policies and practices with practices of care, sustainability, equality and solidarity.
- A map of imaginations for broader housing futures: different experiences demonstrate ways of contesting mainstream, rigid views on housing knowledge and production, through repairing, collectivising, co-producing and queering housing practices and spaces.
Yolande Hendler, Secretary General of the Habitat International Coalition and member of the hub’s steering group, believes that “advancing housing justice is deeply collective and collaborative; the four provocations are a result of this spirit”.
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