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May green policies lead to housing inequalities? This major question is investigated by the Horizon Europe ReHousIn project through the examples of 27 European cities among them large metropoles, but also middle sized and rural towns. After its first year the ReHousIn project is organizing its first Policy Labs in nine countries, among them in Budapest. The event, that took place on the 1st of April gathered Hungarian actors working on housing and green policies (energy efficient retrofitting, nature-based solutions and densification of urban areas). Through the presentations of the researchers at Metropolitan Research Institute the negative externalities of green investments, strongly experienced in Western European cities like green gentrification and renoviction, were showcased. The workshop in Hungary called the attention to several specificities of the Central European Region. The participants expressed their major concern that the weakness of green policies in Hungary seem to be more harmful to the socially excluded inhabitants than the possible negative effect of their implementation. It was also highly emphasized that due to the super ownership structure of the Hungarian housing stock social movements are much less quick and responsive than in European cities with high rate of rental units, which slows down gentrification and renoviction. On the other hand, Hungarian municipalities lack the tools to influence strongly the potential negative housing impacts of green investments, as they own less than 2.5% of the housing stock, and due to general centralization trends, they also have less and less financial resources and are crowded out from many fields of public policies.

MRI is the leader of a consortium (with Politecnico Torino and University of Valencia) implementing the ESPON URDICO project. This one year project aims to analyse and compare the implementation of the Urban Dimension of Cohesion Policy in a diverse group of cities and urban areas. Data and qualitative analyses will explore (for the periods 2014-2020 and 2021 onwards) the different approaches to sustainable urban development in the cities/urban areas of Budapest, Florence, Ghent, Prague, Rotterdam, Strasbourg, Valencia, and Warsaw. Local experts and Eurocities are part of the working team, which is supported also by other organizations, like France Urbaine, Deutscher Städtetag, the Italian ANCI, the Dutch VNG, EUI and JRC, which act as observers. The Kick Off meeting was held in Budapest on 28 January.

For more information: https://www.espon.eu/projects/urdico-urban-dimension-cohesion-policy-and-other-eu-programmes

On the 17 of March Metropolitan Research Institute organised workshop dealing with the planning dilemmas of the Social Climate Plan in Hungary in the framework of the ComActivate project. The representative of the Ministry of Energy presented on the framework conditions and the current state of planning. The plenary was followed by three parallel thematic sessions.

The goal of the Social Climate Plan is to mitigate the price impact of the Emission Trading System (2) on buildings and transportation. One year before the introduction of ETS2 (1 of January 2026 according to plans) the member states should implement measures that decrease energy poverty in the building sector but primarily not by income support (however, it is also allowed), but by structural interventions into the renovation of the building stock.

The European Commission has developed methodological guidance on the creation of the national Social Climate Plans, but these guidelines could not properly take into account the differences between the member states. The Hungarian housing stock is much more owner occupied and socially more mixed also spatially and within the same buildings than the ones in Western Europe. Under these circumstances, it is much more difficult to support exclusively the energy poor.

The participants at the workshop aimed to find solutions on how to identify the energy poor in the privately owned family house, multi-family buildings and municipally owned housing segments, and besides that how it can be ensured that the non-energy poor leverage their funds as well.

We have reached the first milestone in the SOLACE CEE project! Over the past few months, several important events have taken place: in October 2024, we held the kickoff meeting in Košice, and then in December, the innovation team met in Budapest. Our working group has completed several important tasks in the past few months:

• We prepared the Monitoring and Evaluation Plan, which included developing surveys and interviews for the involved clients and professionals.

• We organized separate online meetings for project partners to ensure that the data collection elements matched the individual needs of the organizations.

• Due to the different target groups, we needed to create specialized surveys: separate questionnaires were developed for individuals and households.

• Our team actively participates in the work of the Innovation and Communication teams as well.

Details can be found at the link below: https://mri.hu/en/solace-cee/