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Manila, 17 June 2015 – The leading event for advocating affordable housing solutions and decent shelter for low-income families will expand to take place simultaneously in three locations in the Asia-Pacific region this year. Organized by Habitat for Humanity, the Asia-Pacific Housing Forum is a biennial conference that gathers together major actors engaged in developing and delivering sustainable solutions for poverty housing issues.
Under the theme ‘Building Impact’, the forum expects to engage over 1,000 leaders and experts in the field of affordable housing, ranging from policy-makers, entrepreneurs, private sector businesses, academics and civil society players.
“The highlight of this year’s forum is the launch of satellite events to be held in two large urban centers - Delhi, India, and Manila, in the Philippines-, alongside the main event in Hong Kong,” said Rick Hathaway, Asia-Pacific vice president, Habitat for Humanity.
He added “The three events will lift the forum to a whole new level by uniting a record number of participants to discuss local and regional poverty housing topics. The Housing Forum aims to highlight innovative solutions, drive systemic policy change and market shifts, and strengthen partnerships – in order to offer affordable housing solutions at scale for low-income populations, and in a way that makes business and economic sense.”
“The Asia-Pacific Housing Forum is timely, coming a year ahead of Habitat III, the bi-decennial United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development. Habitat for Humanity has been elected to represent civil society in events leading up to and at Habitat III. Habitat for Humanity will use the Asia-Pacific Housing Forum as a way of gathering input from civil society in the region,” continued Hathaway.
Further information and registration details for the Asia-Pacific Housing Forum: aphousingforum.org.
Another highlight of the Housing Forum is the Wharton-Habitat for Humanity housing finance course, a special collaboration between Habitat for Humanity and the prestigious Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania. The course to be conducted in Hong Kong on 1-2 September focuses on various aspects of housing finance for low-income families in the Asia-Pacific region – regulation, financing and delivering mortgage finance; non-mortgage housing finance models and pricing models.
The main event in Hong Kong will feature four different tracks: Building leadership - profiling organizations and individuals at the forefront of the fight against substandard housing; Impacting communities - examining the key elements of sustainable housing solutions; Building markets - exploring markets that low-income families use to meet their shelter needs, and Impacting society - bringing advocates and volunteers together to present insights on changing housing policy and sharing ideas to raise awareness of housing as a way out of poverty.
