The Hàbitat3 Foundation and Cellnex Telecom sign an agreement to provide connectivity to the social housing units to be built in the Casa Bloc

• The project will reduce energy consumption, improve environmental comfort in homes and anticipate risk situations.
• The agreement also includes the installation of a Wi-fi network all over the building to facilitate Internet access to the users of these homes, a key factor in reducing the digital divide.
• Signing this agreement strengthens the 2017 alliance between both institutions to improve the lives of vulnerable people.
• Work to refurbish the former Casa Bloc residence will begin in the first quarter of this year.

Barcelona, 10 February 2020. On Wednesday the Hàbitat3 Foundation and Cellnex Telecom signed a cooperation agreement as part of the Llar Casa Bloc project led by Habitat3, through which the telecommunications infrastructure operator will provide connectivity and sensorisation technologies to the social homes to be built, making it easier to monitor energy consumption or aspects related to resident comfort.

This monitoring process, via the Internet of Things (IoT), will provide Habitat3 with more information than currently available for decision-making in the social management and monitoring of residents in homes. Thanks to this project, the future residents of the Casa Bloc will also be able to drastically reduce their energy bills and their homes will be more energy efficient.

Cellnex will also provide the Casa Bloc with the necessary connectivity infrastructure for all homes to have Internet access (wi-fi), bridging the digital divide and making sure that internet access is not just one more element increasing the risk of social exclusion of these groups.

The former Casa Bloc residence (C/Residencia, 10, Barcelona, Sant Andreu district) was turned over to the Hàbitat3 Foundation by the Catalan Housing Agency in 2016 for use as social housing. The Hàbitat3 Foundation is about to begin the refurbishing work, transforming the residence into 17 social rental housing units adapted to the accommodation needs of the people attended to by the social entities of the Third Social Sector Board or facing a social emergency situation attended to by Barcelona City Council’s social services. It will be home to around 45 people with mental health issues and/or addictions, or homeless people, or those suffering residential exclusion. Once the homes are completed, they will also be managed by the Hàbitat3 Foundation.

This will be the second project in which the Hàbitat3 Foundation and Cellnex work together to provide social housing with connectivity. In December 2017, they launched the first pilot test in this field in conjunction with other Foundations included in the Third Social Sector Board of Catalonia, as part of the m4Social project. The project was extended in 2019 thanks to the positive results obtained in the environmental comfort of the homes, minimising energy costs and early detection and resolution of incidents.

Antoni Brunet, Director of corporate and public affairs at Cellnex stated: “This project is further proof of how technology can help to improve quality of life for people; also how connectivity, a service that has become essential in the digital society in which we live, can become an inclusive factor for people in vulnerable situations”. And he added “We are very pleased to be working with Habitat3 on this flagship project and to be able to cooperate with them to make it possible.”

Carme Trilla, President of the Hàbitat3 Foundation, emphasised that “alliances like this one with Cellnex allow us to empower the people who live in the homes we manage, giving them greater autonomy.”

About the Habitat3 Foundation

The Habitat3 Foundation, promoted by the Third Sector Board, is a social housing rental manager made available to social inclusion projects of Catalan Third Social Sector entities that require housing for their projects and public administrations who need to meet housing demands that are in excess of the current supply of public social housing.

To this end, the Hàbitat3 Foundation works to find and obtain housing that can be rented out at very low prices and with the lowest possible supply costs to make them as affordable as possible for the rental managers and tenants.

Since it was created, just five years ago, Fundació Hàbitat3 has contributed to the growth of the social housing stock in Catalonia: it currently manages 494 homes in some twenty municipalities, mainly in the metropolitan area of Barcelona. These houses are home to 1,317 people.

About Cellnex Telecom

Cellnex Telecom is Europe’s leading independent operator of telecommunications and broadcasting infrastructures with a total portfolio of more than 58,000 sites all over Europe. The company operates in eight countries: Spain, Italy, Netherlands, France, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Ireland and Portugal.

Cellnex’s business is structured in four major areas: telecommunication infrastructures services; audiovisual broadcasting networks; security and emergency service networks and solutions for smart urban infrastructure and services management (smart cities and the “Internet of Things” (IoT)).

Cellnex has a Corporate Responsibility policy based on international standards (such as the United Nations Global Compact) and takes on board the specific SA8000 management framework. The company’s CR Master Plan sets the objectives, actions and monitoring indicators of the various areas of sustainability defined. Each year the company publishes its Integrated Annual Report, prepared according to the GRI standard and audited by an independent third party.