As part of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action (MSCA) project entitled “RE-DWELL – Delivering affordable and sustainable housing in Europe” is being implemented.

The goals of the project include bringing together the academic community, research institutes and thematically relevant sectors, and supporting the training of persons with PhD degrees in the field of housing, housing policy and housing studies. A total of 10 academic institutions and 12 partner organizations from nine EU member states are participating in this four-year project (1 October 2020 – 30 September 2024). Croatia is represented in this project by Gojko Bežovan – in collaboration with Zoran Šućur and Ivan Rimac – from the Social Work Study Centre of the Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb, with professional and logistical support from the partner organization, the Centre for the Development of Non-Profit Organizations (CERANEO). The project employs 15 PhD students, early stage researchers, who, among other project activities, stayed at partner institutions for two months. As part of the RE-DWELL project, CERANEO as a partner was tasked with accepting three doctoral candidates for a two-month study stay. As part of the two-month study stay (secondment), doctoral candidates Alejandro Perez Fernandez from the University of Delft, Anna Martin from the Corvinus University in Budapest, and Marko Horvat from the University of Zagreb stayed at CERANEO.

Doctoral candidate Alejandro Fernández Pérez stayed at the Department of Social Policy of the Faculty of Law in Zagreb, in partnership with the CERANEO association from 17 January 2022 to 18 March 2022. The purpose of the stay was to conduct research on the Assessment of the Effects of the Housing Loan Subsidy Program on Housing Affordability in Croatia, which Alejandro Fernández Pérez conducted in collaboration with co-supervisors Prof. Gojko Bežovan and Josip Pandžić, PhD. The PhD student’s stay and partnership with CERANEO resulted in the publication “The Role of Mortgage Subsidies in the Croatian Economic Growth Strategy: A Political-Economic Approach to the Social Housing Sector” in the journal of the second quartile (Q2).

PhD student Anna Martin stayed at the Department of Social Policy in Zagreb, in partnership with the CERANEO association from 16 January 2023 to 17 March 2023. The purpose of the stay was to conduct comparative research on housing policy in Croatia and Hungary, which Anna Martin conducted in collaboration with co-supervisor Prof. Gojko Bežovan and the CERANEO association.

PhD student Marko Horvat is employed at the Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb, with the research topic “Comparative analysis of the effects of modernization of social housing policies in Slovenia, Croatia and Slovakia”. Marko Horvat stayed at CERANEO from 1 March 2022 to 1 May 2022. The partnership with CERANEO has resulted in a comprehensive research project on the topic of “Sustainability of the Social Integration System for the Homeless in Croatia”, which is expected to be published in early 2024. This research is a very important addition to Marko’s doctoral thesis, which, among other things, explores access to affordable housing for vulnerable groups, a topic on which CERANEO has proven knowledge and experience.

Housing affordability and sustainability have been recognized as extremely important problems for European societies, and an approach based on their separation and separate research and policy treatment has become obsolete at a time when the challenges of housing care symptomatically indicate the interconnectedness of those features. In this sense, disciplinary and regional boundaries are disappearing, and cooperation between academic and non-academic actors is becoming a crucial factor in housing development. This will be particularly reflected in the education of young doctoral candidates whose future activities will constitute an innovative holistic approach to the study of housing affordability and sustainability. More about project activities and current events can be found on the official project website: https://www.re-dwell.eu.