Review by Muhammad Hammad

The Global Housing Crisis

The global housing crisis is a multidimensional challenge driven by rising costs, rapid urbanization, and climate change, with 3.4 billion people lacking adequate housing and 44% of households globally overburdened by rent. Five core issues—affordability, displacement, informality, sustainability, and liveability—intersect to widen structural deficits, disproportionately exposing vulnerable populations and informal settlements to economic and environmental shocks despite the construction sector’s massive 13% contribution to global GDP.

To resolve this crisis, governments and stakeholders must rebalance housing as both a vital social good and a strategic economic pillar within sustainable development frameworks. This requires adopting holistic, multisector strategies that combine comprehensive demand- and supply-side affordability measures, climate resilience, and formal recognition of community-led and informal housing solutions.

What Have We Learnt from 50 Years of Housing Policy?

Decades of market-led, ownership-centric policies have failed to resolve the global housing crisis, deepening inequalities and leaving low-income groups vulnerable to forced evictions, homelessness, and systemic human rights violations. Compounding these issues are fragmented national policies, weak multilevel governance where under-resourced local authorities struggle to implement top-down directives, and the systematic exclusion of non-state actors who drive much of the actual housing production.

To build inclusive housing systems, governments must re-establish public leadership, reclaiming control over land and finance while moving beyond property-oriented models to embrace diverse tenure types and upgrading. Effective reform requires coherent, human rights-aligned policies, empowered local governments with real decision-making authority, and inclusive stakeholder participation to ensure housing solutions match lived realities.

The Housing Affordability Crisis

The global housing affordability crisis has worsened significantly over the past two decades, driven by supply shortages that expanded from 251 million units in 2010 to 288 million in 2023 alongside global price-to-income ratios jumping from 9.5 to 11.7. This escalation is fuelled by rapid urbanization, soaring construction costs, and speculative financial investment, leaving 44% of global renters spending over 30% of their income on housing. The burden falls heavily on vulnerable groups—such as youth, migrants, and low-income households—widening intergenerational wealth gaps and triggering widespread tenure insecurity and displacement anxiety.

Addressing this crisis requires a comprehensive strategy that aligns housing policy with broader economic, social, and spatial planning frameworks rather than relying on isolated sector measures. Governments must reform supply systems by streamlining land management and regulations, target financial assistance toward low-income and informal workers, implement strong regulatory safeguards against corporate speculation, and build robust public-private-community partnerships to ensure lasting affordability.

Beyond Displacement: Mitigating the Loss of Home

With global forced displacement reaching record highs—including 123.2 million people displaced by conflict and violence, and an estimated 64 million displaced from informal settlements by urban development between 2003 and 2023—cities have become the primary frontline for these populations. Often falling through the cracks of fragmented protection regimes, urban displaced groups face severe economic exploitation, tenure insecurity, forced evictions, and heightened vulnerabilities (especially for women and minorities) while local governments lack the mandate, resources, and coordination to properly support them.

Effectively addressing urban displacement requires shifting away from short-term humanitarian aid toward integrated, city-wide development approaches that treat displaced individuals as equal urban residents. Governments must empower local authorities with clear mandates and financial resources, bridge the humanitarian-development divide, and replace top-down housing provisions with self-reliant, community-led models like cash-for-shelter and incremental upgrading that protect livelihoods and prevent forced evictions.

Leveraging Informality for Affordable and Adequate Housing

Informal settlements continue to expand globally, with absolute numbers rising from 895 million in 2000 to approximately 1.13 billion in 2024, driven by unplanned urbanization, rising inequality, and bureaucratic regulatory frameworks. Despite their vital role in providing affordable housing, economic opportunity, and flexible adaptation for low-income populations, informal areas remain heavily stigmatized. Consequently, many governments continue to rely on forced evictions—frequently justified by major events or climate change mitigation, while traditional upgrading programs often fail due to policy bottlenecks, poor livelihood integration, and poorly designed titling that triggers gentrification and displacement.

To address this, policies must shift from eradication and rigid frameworks toward leveraging informality as a legitimate, incremental mode of urban development. Governments must adopt collaborative, co-produced approaches with residents and civil society, reform outdated regulatory frameworks and prioritize upgrading that preserves social networks. Furthermore, securing tenure requires moving beyond narrow freehold titling to embrace a pluralistic spectrum of rights—including customary, communal, and cooperative models—while fully integrating gender perspectives and climate resilience.

Building Climate Resilient Housing

Housing sits at the centre of the global climate challenge, responsible for 17 to 21% of total greenhouse gas emissions and operating severely off track from Paris Agreement targets while weather-related hazards displaced 45.8 million people in 2024 alone. Low-income and informal settlements bear the brunt of these escalating risks, facing heightened vulnerability and displacement. Yet, with roughly 60% of the buildings expected to exist by 2050 yet to be constructed, the sector presents a monumental window of opportunity to simultaneously cut emissions, scale low-carbon designs, and protect vulnerable communities.

Addressing this crisis requires a whole-system national approach that accounts for whole-life carbon across the entire housing lifecycle, alongside robust multilevel governance that aligns local implementation with national frameworks. Governments must integrate housing into climate policies by empowering community-led initiatives that utilize sustainable local materials and embedding strict equity safeguards—such as prioritizing tenure security and affordability—to prevent exclusionary outcomes like green gentrification.

Housing and the City: Delivering Equitable, Liveable and Inclusive Housing

Rapidly rising costs, poor coordination, and widespread discrimination have fuelled severe residential segregation and urban sprawl, with urban areas expanding at nearly twice the rate of population growth since 1975. This low-density sprawl increases per-capita infrastructure costs, strains municipal budgets, and pushes low-income households into distant peripheral areas. Furthermore, treating land as a financial asset rather than a social good has resulted in paradoxically high vacancies alongside unmet needs, while low civic participation—with only 19% of cities showing strong civil society engagement in planning—leaves vulnerable groups excluded from decisions that shape their living environments.

To achieve equitable, liveable, and inclusive cities, governments must adopt proactive, pro-poor planning and governance strategies that prioritize people-centred social housing near transit corridors and jobs. This requires moving beyond superficial consultation to implement legally binding co-governance, transferring real resource control and land authority to community-based organizations. Additionally, cities must enforce robust equity safeguards—such as collective tenure security and inclusionary zoning—during neighbourhood upgrades to curb speculative displacement, prevent green gentrification, and guarantee that urban liveability functions as a universal right.