When Climate Hits Home: Building Partnerships for Resilient and Affordable Housing

Globally more than 2.8 billion people are living in inadequate housing, often in locations highly exposed to floods, heat stress, landslides, and other climate hazards (UN Habitat). As climate impacts intensify and urban populations continue to grow (particularly across Asia, Africa and Latin America) housing conditions are increasingly determining who is most at risk and who is able to recover from climate shocks. Informal, precarious, and inadequate housing is a critical entry point for climate resilience, yet housing is still not included in many climate commitments and agreements. Only 21% of countries that submitted a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) demonstrated a high commitment to housing and only 16 NDCs cite informal settlements as a national issue (Habitat for Humanity, 2025). This networking event, convened by the REHOUSE Partnership, will position housing as a strategic lever for advancing climate resilience in cities and communities. The session will focus on how cross-sector and multi-level partnerships can overcome persistent fragmentation between climate, housing, and urban development agendas, and help translate global climate commitments into people-centered, locally actionable housing strategies. Building on country level evidence and practice, the event will showcase distinct but complementary pathways for embedding housing at the center of climate resilience efforts. For example, in Kenya, recurrent flooding in informal settlements illustrates how climate disasters intersect with inadequate housing, weak infrastructure, and limited tenure security, which highlights the need for coordinated action across national, county, and community levels. In Brazil, large-scale policy initiatives and community-driven upgrading efforts demonstrate how housing, climate adaptation, and social inclusion can be more systematically integrated through national frameworks while remaining grounded in local realities. In Colombia, the Ministry of Housing has partnered with local CBOs to develop a technical assistance model to support local implementation of the national housing program, with a focus on climate resilient upgrades. In India, there is an opportunity to expand local networks developed for nature-based solution projects for work in informal settlements. The session will bring together policymakers, local governments, community organizations, researchers, practitioners, and funders to exchange insights, build relationships, and identify opportunities for collaboration. Rather than focusing on standalone projects, the event emphasizes partnerships, governance, and enabling conditions that allow climate-resilient housing approaches to scale. By centering housing within climate resilience discussions at WUF13, this event aims to strengthen connections across sectors and geographies, elevate locally grounded solutions, and support more coherent pathways from global climate and urban commitments to action on the ground. Key objectives 1. Strengthen cross-sector and multi-level partnerships to advance climate-resilient housing in informal and vulnerable urban contexts. 2. Highlight practical, locally grounded solutions that demonstrate different pathways for embedding housing at the center of climate resilience. 3. Support translation of global climate commitments into actionable, people-centered housing strategies at national and local levels.