Hub publishes its first Housing Justice Provocations Series
The Hub for Housing Justice today has launched its first series of collaborative publications: four Provocations to inspire and nurture housing justice efforts.
During the first half of 2025, four working groups facilitated exchanges on each of the propositions of the housing justice framework. Each group, steered by members of the Hub’s partner organisations and open to the participation of all key allies, explored what the propositions mean for the housing justice community and how they can provide a framework for action. The result is this 2025 series of Housing Justice Provocations.
What are the Provocations?
The Housing Justice Provocations are a four-part publication produced collaboratively by Hub partners and allies in Brazil, South Africa, the UK, Italy, Nepal and beyond. They reflect the key messages and ideas that emerged from the Hub’s exchanges around each of the housing justice propositions, which form the core of the Hub’s advocacy agenda. For each proposition, the Provocations showcase how applying a ‘justice lens’ offers a key opportunity to transform housing systems.
Housing deprivation can often result from exclusionary housing practices that build on a legacy of oppression, disproportionately impacting groups and geographies that have historically borne the brunt of colonialism, patriarchy, racism and capitalism. This Provocation is based around the Hub’s proposition for ‘Anti-discriminatory housing policy and practice.’
The stories in this provocation represent how discriminatory housing shapes people’s life outcomes. The provocation then proposes practical steps towards making anti-discriminatory housing a reality.
Based on the proposition ‘Radically democratic forms of housing production’, this Provocation seeks to promote democratic forms of housing production and management by offering an open glossary of different approaches, practices, and concepts that housing movements are already putting forward to democratise housing and democratise through housing.
This provocation invites the reader to consider, on the one hand, how to democratise housing processes and, on the other, what is the role of housing in making societies more democratic
This Provocation is a collective narrative on why housing is the infrastructure that cities and human settlements need to function, why housing is critical for social and ecological well-being, and why we must understand the fundamentally collective nature of housing. This provocation is based on the proposition for ‘Housing as an infrastructure for more sustainable, caring and fairer cities.’
This Provocation is based on the proposition for ‘Housing policy and practice that broaden imaginations for housing futures’, which seeks to advance knowledge production processes that promote more open and diverse visions about where, how, by and for whom housing policies happen. The Provocation creates a map of experiences that contest mainstream views of housing futures and re-imagine future landscapes through repairing, collectivising, co-producing and queering housing practices and spaces.
Learn more about the work of the Hub
You can find out more about the four propositions in last year’s issue paper published by the Hub’s secretariat, IIED. To stay up to date with news of the Hub, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn.
Save the date! On Wednesday, the 24th September the Hub for Housing Justice will host an event to explore the Provocations and hear examples of the work that brought them together.
