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Four ways we can make sure everyone has a place to call “home”

by Rick Hathaway | @habitat_org | Habitat for Humanity International
Monday, 4 July 2016 13:00 GMT

Orich Florestal (L), 24 and Rosemond Altidon, 22, stand on the edge of their partially destroyed apartment of Port-au-Prince January 9, 2011. REUTERS/Allison Shelley

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* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.

A call for global leaders to ensure that everyone has a decent place to live

Around the world, we all long for a place to call “home.”  More than just a house, a “home” is a safe haven for our families, a strong and stable place where our children can thrive, and a solid foundation on which a family can build a better life. Sharing our homes with family members and friends is a warm tradition as old as human settlement. Strong and stable homes help build strong and stable communities.

At Habitat for Humanity, we recognize that a home provides strength, stability and self-reliance for people across the Asia-Pacific region. While homes vary in appearance around the world, the need for a home is universal.

Housing should be a key element in what is being called the “New Urban Agenda,” a United Nations-sponsored declaration of global political commitment being developed by participants worldwide and focused on the sustainable development of towns, cities and other human settlements. This agenda, evolving out of a series of meetings known as Habitat III, will set a new global strategy around urbanization for the next two decades. While the agenda promotes solid principles at its core, we are calling on global leaders to ensure that four key principles are included. The New Urban Agenda must:

  1. Emphasize adequate and affordable housing;
  2. Prioritize security of tenure;
  3. Promote community-led development; and
  4. Set specific and accountable measures of success 


No matter what form a home takes, it also occupies land; a home takes up space. As our global population grows, the supply of available land and space is dwindling. By 2030, UN-HABITAT estimates that 3 billion people – about 40 percent of the world’s population – will need access to housing.  This means demand for housing in the region increases by an average of 20,000 dwellings a day.   

This appeal for housing is most acutely felt in urban areas. Rapid urbanization is taking place in Asia and the Pacific – where an additional 120,000 people move into the region’s cities every day. 

By 2050, 70 percent of the world’s population is projected to be living in urban areas. Based on current estimates, that translates to 6.7 billion people (roughly the entire global population in 2010) who will be living in cities.  As demand for housing soars, so too do the costs, and “home” is becoming less and less affordable for many families by the day. Left unchecked, rapid urbanization will bring about unfettered growth of slums and other unplanned settlements worldwide as people search for somewhere – anywhere – to reside.

If we stand idly by, billions of people will be denied adequate homes in our lifetimes.

Fortunately, a solution is possible – if we act now. This month, the last of three high level Preparatory Committee meetings that lead to the Habitat III conference in Ecuador in October, will be held in Surabaya, Indonesia. The finalized New Urban Agenda document that will emerge from the Habitat III conference must confront the difficult realities of rapid urbanization across the globe. If appropriately drafted, the New Urban Agenda will provide a guide for global efforts toward sustainable and planned human developments that can ensure that all people will live with dignity in our rapidly-changing and urbanizing world. 

The first draft of the New Urban Agenda promotes to varying degrees the four principles we advocate, but we must be fervent and ensure they are included in the final version. This agenda will shape the next 20 years of global development, and represents our best chance of making our voices heard.  Make no mistake: a principled approach to development is the only way to ensure that we are building healthy, sustainable communities, not simply creating new settlements.

To that end, the New Urban Agenda must:

  • Recognize that “the expansion of adequate and affordable housing is central to achieving safe, resilient, and sustainable cities.” We must call for housing “to be elevated as one of the highest priorities for national governments, and must reaffirm the right to adequate housing for all.”  This language is taken from the first draft of the New Urban Agenda, and we call on global leaders to keep it there as new drafts emerge.
  • Prioritize secure tenure rights, especially for women. This priority should reach all levels of government, creating strong land management institutions at the national and local levels. These institutions must regulate land registration and governance to emphasize fairness and equity. The goals must be to reduce unjust evictions and extortion payments and to support legally-recognized documentation to secure tenure rights.
  • Create policy environments that harness and enhance public, private, and civil society participation. Communities are born from participation and the principles of social inclusion; without these values, development is something that is done to the people, not by the people.
  • Ensure that efforts to provide healthy and sustainable settlements are working and demand transparency. We live in a data-driven age where it is not enough to receive periodic progress reports that do not measure specific impacts. Only by collecting and sharing data can we learn from our cooperative successes and failures and work together for a better world.


Our work is cut out for us.  The world must continue to increase access to affordable housing and sustainable communities until all of us can have the opportunity for an adequate home. The New Urban Agenda sets us on the right track, but we must call on our leaders in the Asia-Pacific region to ensure the final version reaches the ultimate goal of a world where everyone has a decent place to live.

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