During the International Social Housing Festival (ISHF) on 7th June, we will present the MAPHab tool, the mapping of the fight for housing rights, a tool developed by the DESC Observatory as part of the Critical Mapping in Municipalist Movements project in collaboration with Labor-K Lab and the Technical Univesity of Berlin. It is a website that visualizes the eviction data in the city of Barcelona and feeds on two databases: on the one hand, it aggregates the launch warrant cases registered by the PAH of Barcelona since 2016; on the other, it also aggregates the eviction calls that have been launched from the  Desnonaments BCN (EVICTIONS BCN) Telegram channel where all the organisations belonging to the movement for housing in the city participate.

About MAPHab

The website MapHab - Mapping for Housing, has been created in collaboration with the DESC Observatory, Labor-K Lab and the Technical Univesity of Berlin all together working on the Critical Mapping in Municipalist Movements project.. It is driven by the belief that critical mapping is a key tool for empowerment, as it allows the democratic knowledge of the territory and establishes connections and alliances. In Barcelona, the task of mapping evictions aims to provide a tool to make them visible and show where they occur. It is also intended to provide information on who evicts Barcelona in order to make the property structure more transparent. For the future, this website aims to become a platform for collecting different materials related to housing struggles.

At the moment, the website hosts two different maps:

• "Eviction alert" is a map of the calls to stop evictions in Catalonia from 2023. Displays the place, date and time, as well as the name of the owner (in the case of a legal person) and the group making the call. Information is provided by activists fighting for decent housing. The map aims to shed light on the problem of evictions throughout Catalonia and grassroots resistance, as well as systematize information and encourage reflection on where evictions occur. By recording the date and time of the calls, it is possible to trace their temporal evolution in order to identify potentially relevant patterns. In turn, the systematization of the owners' data aims to improve understanding of the relationship between geography and the structure of ownership with regard to the problem of evictions. Finally, showing the areas of activity of the different groups allows us to visualize overlaps and similarities.
• "Barcelona eviction cases (2016–2022)" is a map of cases of eviction supported by groups fighting for the right to housing in Barcelona. Included are the eviction files managed by the Platform of Affected by the Mortgage (PAH) in Barcelona between 2016 and 2022. Contains the date, address and tenure of the dwelling, as well as the name of the owner if he is a legal person (as of 2020). In addition, it shows the result of each case: whether it was suspended in court, stopped at the door, executed or unknown. In addition, the map also collects calls from different housing groups to block evictions between 2018 and 2022. It includes information about the place, date and name of the collective that made the call. In this case, however, there is no information on the holding of housing (enrolment, mortgage or occupation), the result before 2020 and the owner's name in the case of legal person before 2022. Only the result after 2020 and the owner's name is specified for 2022 only. The objective is to identify spatial-temporal patterns based on data collected by groups fighting for housing in Barcelona. It aims to raise awareness of the information produced by the same groups, pointing out both the potentialities and the limits of the data collected. In doing so, this map aims to show how the act of mapping can contribute to the fight.

About International Social Housing Festival

The International Social Housing Festival (ISHF) is an initiative by Housing Europe, the European Federation of Public, Cooperative and Social Housing, and its members and allies, present in 25 countries and comprising 25 million homes, 11% of the European Union's housing stock.

The first edition of the ISHF was held in Amsterdam in 2017 and had a total of 1,300 people in 45 events over 2 days. The second edition was organized in Lyon in 2019 and had about 5,000 participants and 70 events over 4 days. The third edition scheduled for 2021 had to be moved due to the COVID-19 pandemic and finally took place in June 2022 in Helsinki, where about 1,000 people participated in 80 different activities over 3 days.

The ISHF is a unique opportunity to promote debate among Housing Europe's member organisations and, above all, among them and the various actors involved in housing: research centres, professionals, local authorities, residents and activists, among others. It is also to articulate the housing sector and to encourage cooperation and technical exchange at international level.