Social Innovation in Housing: Learning from practice across Europe

This paper presents and discusses the results of a brief scoping study on social innovation in housing in Europe. The aim of this paper is to help housing practitioners to understand the main issues and benefits of applying social innovation in housing The paper presents a brief reflection on the application of social innovation in the housing context, followed by practical examples of socially innovative approaches to the delivery of housing services across Europe. It then discusses a number of ‘barriers’ and ‘enablers’ to social innovation in housing. Section 5.1. Demographic change in housing (pp 10-11), examines a number of initiatives that were found to apply new approaches to address the increasing challenge of a greying population in housing. These included not only addressing the specific needs of elderly people, but also finding new ways to live together across generations.