Scaling Resilience--Self-Built Housing as a Pathway to Safer, Climate-Ready Cities

Global housing risk demands urgent attention. An estimated 2.8 billion people worldwide live in inadequate housing—but this figure significantly understates the challenge, rarely accounting for structural safety or critical risks posed by earthquakes, floods, extreme heat, and other climate- and disaster-related threats. Yet there is reason for optimism. Across the Global South, households are already investing in improving their homes wherever resources allow, drawing on the skills of local builders, artisans, and materials producers. Self-built, informal housing is the dominant mode of housing construction—and will continue to be for decades to come. This presents a powerful economic and social opportunity. Homeowner-driven, incremental upgrading is more affordable and sustainable than new construction and can catalyze local construction value chains around affordable, climate-resilient materials and practices. Research shows that upgrading existing housing costs roughly 23% of new construction, while avoiding up to 18 metric tons of embodied carbon emissions per home and simultaneously strengthening safety, health, and livelihoods. Many housing organizations see a clear pathway forward: improving strengthening self-construction practices, promoting quality materials, and providing practical, locally grounded technical and policy guidance to ensure homes are built and upgraded safely and effectively. For over 20 years, organizations such as Build Change, Slum Dwellers International and others have worked with partners worldwide to transform self-construction practices. By supporting learning, knowledge transfer, and skills development among homeowners and local construction workers, families become advocates for resilient housing—and catalysts for larger systemic change. Research by UN-Habitat, the Isandla Institute, and IIED demonstrates that this approach effectively scales resilient construction practices in the self-built housing sector, enabling locally driven housing production at scale. In this session, we will showcase examples that support self-built housing as an innovative, scalable pathway for addressing the global housing crisis—particularly in informal and hard-to-reach communities across the Global South. Government and housing leaders will join the discussion to explore what is required to mobilize the resources required to replicate and scale climate-resilient self-built housing.