Posted 17.10.16
The winners of the World Habitat Awards 2015/16 are being presented with their trophies at Habitat III (17 October).
Housing professionals and decision makers from around the world will be at Habitat III, which is the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development.
The two winners were chosen from submissions from around the world. And although thousands of miles apart from each other, both projects demonstrate how empowered communities have transformed people's lives by creating affordable and safer homes for those in need.
Cano Martin Pena Community Land Trust in Puerto Rico is one of the winners. The Cano Martin Pena Channel was once a waterway that ran through the middle of the Puerto Rican capital San Juan. Eight informal communities have organised themselves into a Community Land Trust to transform this polluted and flood prone tidal channel into a sustainable community.
A Community Land Trust or CLT is a model of home ownership that develops and manages affordable housing on behalf of the community. It does this by separating the value of the land and the buildings. Land is held in perpetuity by the community enabling it to remain affordable for local people.
Canopy and Giroscope are joint winners - the first UK based winners for over a decade. They work in cities in the North of England and are pioneers in a movement of UK housing providers called 'Self Help Housing'.
These housing charities train homeless and vulnerable people to renovate abandoned properties and bring them back into use. The completed houses provide low cost homes for homeless local people who are homeless or in housing need.
The Awards were established in 1985 by the Building and Social Housing Foundation (BSHF) for the identification and the promotion of good habitat practices.
