HOUSING

📝 Our assessment

Housing is a fundamental human right, essential to the fulfillment of many other rights, including health, education, and economic security. It is not merely physical shelter but a cornerstone of social and economic resilience, particularly in cities and regions. However, the global housing crisis continues to intensify, marked by worsening affordability, increased financialization and speculation, environmental degradation, and deepening social-spatial segregation. These challenges exacerbate inequalities and discrimination, undermine inclusive and sustainable development, disrupt community cohesion, and hinder democracy and the participation of neighbors in public life. This poses long-term risks to societal prosperity, sustainability and resilience and intergenerational equity.

Informal settlements and slums, which house significant portions of urban populations, are particularly vulnerable. Marginalized groups—especially women, youth, older persons, single-parent households and those experiencing homelessness—face compounded discrimination and exclusion from equitable housing opportunities. At the same time, climate change is worsening housing vulnerabilities through the destruction of homes, forced displacement, and the disruption of livelihoods.

Addressing housing justice requires a comprehensive approach that prioritizes the social function of land, connects housing to essential public services, and ensures that communities have equitable access to economic opportunities. The urgency of this issue calls for a new social contract rooted in equity, sustainability, and the right to the city.

🤝 Our commitment

Local and regional governments are uniquely positioned to tackle the housing crisis and drive transformative solutions. Their proximity to communities, their innovation and responsiveness to their neighbors’ needs, and their role as policy co-creators and implementers make them central actors in promoting housing justice. Local and regional governments possess the political mandate, innovation and responsiveness-driven technical expertise, and institutional capacity to deliver housing solutions that are inclusive, sustainable, and grounded in local realities.

• Housing Justice for Caring Cities: Upholding housing as a fundamental human right, integral to the dignity and well-being of individuals and communities. Embedding this principle into local policies and frameworks, we aim to ensure universal access to adequate housing as a foundation for equitable and sustainable urban development. Understanding housing as essential infrastructure for creating caring cities and regions. By ensuring social inclusion, support vulnerable populations and enable equitable access to public services.

• Advancing the Social Function of Land through Proximity: Promoting access to adequate housing and proximity-based, people-centered urban planning models is central to addressing the housing crisis. Policies must frame housing as a public good, placing the social function of land at their core by prioritizing its use to meet community needs and ensuring housing initiatives are connected to essential local public services, economic opportunities, and resilient infrastructure to combat spatial inequality and reduce segregation while ensuring that decisions reflect intergenerational needs.

• Climate-Resilient Housing Solutions: As the impacts of climate change intensify, it is essential to integrate climate resilience into housing policies, recognizing the critical need to address loss and damage caused by climate change. By linking housing initiatives to sustainable infrastructure, disaster risk reduction strategies, and green financing mechanisms, local and regional governments ensure that housing systems are equitable, adaptable, and built to last.

📢 Our call

• Localized Community-Driven Solutions: Housing justice requires decentralized governance that empowers communities—particularly youth—to actively participate in decision-making processes. Local and regional governments are at the forefront of implementing affirmative anti-discrimination actions that address historical injustices faced by marginalized groups, particularly women and those in informal settlements, ensuring that solutions are inclusive and forward-looking.

• Decentralized Financial Mechanisms for Housing Justice: Promote the establishment of decentralized, equitable financial mechanisms to address the housing crisis effectively. This includes leveraging public budgets and promoting direct access to international financing tailored to local realities, enabling the implementation of sustainable, community-driven housing solutions that bridge the urban financing gap and ensure resources reach marginalized communities, as part of broader social and economic transformation.