THE 13th UN World Urban Forum opened Sunday in Baku, Azerbaijan, to map ways to resolve the deepening global housing crisis.
The forum’s theme, “Housing the World: Safe and Resilient Cities and Communities,” reflects the UN’s thrust to recalibrate the strategy from just building shelters. Francine Pickup, deputy director of the UN Development Program, emphasizes that the housing crisis “is not primarily a construction problem. We need to go beyond looking at building and houses and look at the urban setting and look at the housing issue as a complex problem.”
Across the world, nearly 2.8 billion people today live in inadequate housing conditions, and more than 300 million are homeless.
The crisis could only worsen as more people move to cities. By 2050, an estimated 70 percent of the world’s population will be living in urban centers, straining health care and education systems, and aggravating social problems like crime and unemployment.
The Baku forum is expected to focus sharply on the rapid growth of informal settlements. Close to 1.1 billion live in slums today. Another 2 billion could be added in the coming decades, the UN projects.
As many as 500 million children are expected to live in slum neighborhoods, where they are vulnerable to severe health, nutritional, educational and social challenges.
Protecting the people affected by the housing crisis from climate shock will be another key topic for discussion. Floods, fiercer storms and wildfires are among the extreme weather events that left more than 20 million homeless in 2023 alone.
Conflicts have also devastated cities and left more than 123 million people displaced worldwide. Over 60 percent of them have sought refuge in urban areas.
But here’s the twist: the building sector remains one of the biggest sources of emissions, pumping 34 percent of energy-related carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
The forum’s participants must agree on a plan to build more housing that avoids the climate crisis from worsening.
Anaclaudia Rossbach, the head of UN Habitat, said the world must be “fully aware of the impact of climate change and the pressure it places on housing systems.”
“What we build, how we build, and where we build all have consequences for natural resources, climate resilience and communities’ ability to withstand shocks and disaster,” Rossbach said.
The Philippines itself is in the middle of a housing crisis. The national housing backlog is between 6.5 million and 10.65 million units. The Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development predicts the shortfall could hit 22 million by 2040 if there is no decisive intervention.
Glaring mismatch
The mismatch in supply and demand is glaring: The private sector builds an average of only 120,000 units annually, while the actual home demand is around 478,000 units.
The government can’t build enough units to fill the gap.
The problem of informal settlements is another lingering issue that defies resolution.
There are 3.7 million informal settler families in the country. Metro Manila has one of the biggest concentrations of urban poor families, with informal settlers residing on riverbanks, under bridges and flood-prone areas.
Efforts to address the housing problem are hamstrung by delays in implementing projects due to red tape and shifting government regulations.
The costs of building socialized housing have also gone up, prompting private developers to concentrate on projects for high-end markets.
The government is trying to shrink the backlog through its Pambansang Pabahay para sa Pilipino, or 4PH program. The original target was ambitious: zero informal settlers by 2028. The program has since shifted from being “production-centric” to “beneficiary-centric,” a more realistic approach that includes building condominium-type units that let informal settler families stay close to their livelihoods.
Families that cannot afford to purchase a house outright can apply for a rental or a community mortgage arrangement.
The country’s housing plan is aligned with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 11, which mandates making cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.
Such alignments are crucial in creating collective action needed to address the global housing crisis.
The UN “cannot solve the global housing crisis alone,” Rossbach said. “We need governments, local authorities, civil society, academia, communities and the private sector to work together.”
A strong coalition of stakeholders can provide the momentum to address the needs of billions who lack adequate housing.
