It all starts at home

The New Urban Agenda (NUA) and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development promote sustainable cities and communities as a basis for a better quality of life, leaving no one behind. To achieve this vision, it is crucial that everyone has access to adequate housing. In the view of that, the NUA “envisages cities and human settlements that fulfil their social function, including the social and ecological function of land with a view to progressively achieving the full realization of the right to adequate housing”. For its part, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, focuses on making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable. Specifically, SDG 11 Target 11.1 revolves about ensuring access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services and slums upgrade.

Despite these guiding frameworks and important efforts in the past decades, we are experiencing a severe global housing crisis with approximately 2.8 billion people experiencing different forms of housing inadequacy. Perhaps, the most visible face of this crisis are slums and informal settlements. During the 2014-2020 period, the absolute number of people living in these types of settlements rose, reaching 1.1 billion people . Concentrated primarily in Africa and Asia, it is important to note that more accurate and reliable data is needed to understand the complexity of slums and informal settlements, including their contribution to cities and society at large; and develop more appropriate interventions . As if this was not enough, approximately 318 million people across the globe are homeless; and therefore, without adequate housing as homelessness implies “living on streets or sidewalks, or in makeshift encampments in rural or urban areas, doubling or tripling up with others, or living in overcrowded improvised shelter, unprotected from the elements or without access to water, sanitation or electricity”  . As people living in slums or informal settlements, homeless people are more likely to experience discrimination, harassment, and criminalization based on their housing situation.  

Furthermore, we experience a housing affordability crisis characterized by the increasing difficulty for people ¬—especially, low- and middle-income households—to afford housing, as housing-related expenses rise faster than salaries and wages. In many advanced economies, the ratio of median house prices to median household incomes has considerably increased since the 1990 . For its part, in developing regions, people generally have had insufficient income levels to meet their basic housing expenses. Aggravated by recent events such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the affordability crisis has been driven by three key factors . First, State withdrawal based on the paradigm of market self-sufficiency, which resulted in a general reduction of national and local government capacities and interventions around public housing provision, particularly for low and middle-income households. Second, inadequacy or absence of legal and regulatory frameworks such as those for mortgage holders, renters, and tenants, encountering exorbitant housing costs. Third, urbanization trends characterized by ownership concentration, increase of housing and land speculation and the financialization of housing, converting housing as an investment tool. The affordability crisis impacts the other aspects of the right to adequate housing, as it can limit access to public services, equipment and infrastructure; undermine security of tenure as people that are unable to afford housing cost are likely to experience insecure tenure; and force people to live in housing far from employment, services, and all the opportunities and benefices cities and human settlements offer.

The current housing crisis is exacerbated by climate change. Extreme weather events such as winds, floods, and extreme heat and cold, contribute to damaging and destroying housing; while slow-onset events—land and forest degradation, biodiversity loss, desertification, ocean acidification, salinization, sea level rise, increasing temperatures, glacial retreat—compromise the habitability of housing and ultimately human settlements across the world. It is of most relevance to note that people in conditions of vulnerability are disproportionately more exposed to the impacts of climate change. The connections between housing and climate change are bidirectional, as housing significantly contributes to climate change in a variety of ways, including through energy consumption, and construction processes and materials which rely on energy and generate emissions. It also contributes to climate change through deforestation, soil sealing and urban sprawl that causes among others, heat island effect and an increased demand for urban transportation, amplifying energy consumption and emissions.  

Violence, human rights violations and conflicts also aggravate the current housing crisis. During such events the right to adequate housing tends to be systematically violated. Attacking and destroying housing undermines its function to "protect the right to live somewhere in security, peace and dignity", and promotes housing shortages, increasing housing costs. Furthermore, violent conflicts encourage forced displacement and arbitrary eviction, and impact the access to public services, including water and health . Therefore, there is no surprise that countries experiencing or transitioning out of conflict appear to be worse off in terms of slum conditions . It is important to note that these impacts are not distributed equally among the population. Some people are particularly more impacted by conflict, including children, which account for 41 per cent of all forcibly displaced people, older persons, persons with disabilities, people of sexual diversity, and women and girls that represents half of the 100 million people displaced by human rights violations, violence, conflict and other similar events .

Against this background, achieving adequate housing for all requires focus on building strategic multi stakeholder alliances and implementing strategic and comprehensive interventions that consider the various interrelated crises. In this line, the Report “Rescuing SDG 11 for a Resilient Urban Planet”, identifies several key actions to fast tracking SDG 11, including the adoption of “housing at the center” approach as a fundamental human right and cornerstone of development priorities, the promotion of an active and broad political participation to ensure access to safe, adequate and affordable housing and basic services, and the development of various financing mechanisms, including, public investment, and land-based financing tools .

At the same time, the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing stresses the need to transcend the sole paradigm of homeownership, empower subnational and local government to guarantee affordable housing, and “proactively regulate land ownership and land use”, ensuring “the social usefulness of land and housing”. This considering that a major component of housing costs is land which can account for up to 70 per cent of the total costs . Moreover, the Special Rapporteur highlights the need to fully integrate disaster risk management and climate change consideration into planning, especially in relation to slums and informal settlements; and incorporate “sustainability” as a core aspect of adequate housing. This is based on the understanding that States “should not realize the right to adequate housing in an endless manner that would undermine collective survival and with it the right to housing as such”. In view of the foregoing, not only the social, but also the ecological function of land emerges as crucial for achieving adequate housing and ultimately, ensuring the Right to the City.

The World Urban Forum 12 “It All Starts at Home: Local Actions for Sustainable Cities and Communities” provides an ideal opportunity to collectively analyze potential pathways and alliances to address the complex global housing crisis, bearing in mind that more adequate and strategic directions need to be taken as we are less than five years away from the end of the 2030 Agenda.

To build on those efforts, this special session will seek to analyze existing and potential actions and strategies that can contribute to address the housing crisis at the intersection of climate change, and other natural and man-made disasters and conflicts; and explore areas of global collaboration to foster communities of practices, knowledge transfer and exchange that promote adequate housing, especially for the most vulnerable groups and people living in slums and informal settlements.

Structure of the special session

Objectives

The special session will analyze existing strategic aspects to tackle the global housing crisis which has emerged at the intersection of ecological, social, and economic crises, and explore possible alliances. The session aims to contribute to consolidate global collaborations, and ultimately build communities of practice, knowledge transfer and exchange, capable of overcoming the current global housing crisis.

Target audience

The session will target leading global actors and institutions on adequate housing to analyze the current global housing crisis and explore possible alliances towards action.

16.00h - 16.10h Opening remarks. 
          By: USG Anacláudia Rossbach, UN Habitat Executive Director.
16.10h - 16.20h Introduction to the Housing Crisis vis-à-vis the ecological, social, and economic crises. 
          By: Héctor Becerril, PhD. RIVHA. Researcher at CONACYT.
16.20h - 17.50h Open Discussion, based on Guiding Questions. 
          Moderates: USG Anacláudia Rossbach, UN Habitat Executive Director.
          With: High-Level Participants.
17.50h - 18.00h What’s Next?
          By: USG Anacláudia Rossbach, UN Habitat Executive Director.
 

Guiding Questions

The following questions will help steer the discussion through an open and horizontal exchange with High-Level participants. The Guiding Questions are designed to ignite the debate and bring about potential paths to action to the pressing issues hereby presented. 

• How to ensure adequate housing, especially for vulnerable groups and people living in informal settlements, connecting and working at the same time the ecological, economic, and social crises?
• Considering the crucial role of land, how to ensure that it fulfills its social and ecological function?
• What could be strategic areas of work, themes, alliances, or other key aspects for building strong global collaborations that promote local and situated communities of practice, knowledge transfer and exchange, for ensuring affordable housing within and across world regions?