With Housing a Growing Global Concern, Habitat for Humanity Targets Informal Settlements
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Favela in Rio De janeiro, Brazil. Donatas Dabravolskas/shutterstock
Habitat for Humanity is probably best known for its U.S. volunteer force, which has been building and improving housing since the 1970s, but today, it ranks among the top 10 largest charities headquartered in the U.S., with an ever-growing scope. In fiscal year 2022, the organization and its affiliates posted an estimated $2.4 billion in combined revenue, nearly half from contributions and grants.
In 2023, Habitat for Humanity took on a new priority — housing equity for residents of the world’s urban slums, barrios and favelas. Last year, it launched Home Equals, a five-year global advocacy campaign that focuses on more than a billion informally housed city dwellers around the world. The organization is raising $15 million for the campaign, which it expects will unlock hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from governments at all levels, and equitably increase access to adequate housing for 15 million people living in informal settlements.
Within informal housing developments, city dwellers bear a disproportionate burden of climate change, lack basic services, and are barred from entry into the financial systems that allow tenure. Over the next 30 years, the number of residents of such settlements is expected to swell by 2 billion, and account for 1 in 4 of all urban dwellers.
Last fall at the Clinton Global Initiative, which ran alongside the U.N. General Assembly, Habitat CEO Jonathan Reckford issued the call to action to help millions of the informally housed gain access to adequate housing by 2028 through the program, working in concert with local communities, governments and other global partners.
Here’s how the organization is working to deliver sustainable policy and systems gains it said can help raise per capita income by up to 10.5%, allow more than 41 million more children to enroll in school, and boost life expectancy.
Housing is a growing funding priority
The United Nations views adequate housing not as a commodity, but as a basic human right that’s central to creating global equity. Housing-related entry points run the gamut of the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals, including the universal right to affordable drinking water, to safe and affordable housing access, and the gendered impact to women across the board.
COVID and a growing influx of refugees due to climate change and conflict is raising the issue’s profile within philanthropic equity work, especially in the U.S. A case in point is MacKenzie Scott. Since her giving began, 213 of Yield Giving’s gifts have been keyed to “housing,” totaling more than $1.2 billion, not including amounts that have not been disclosed. In 2022, Scott made informal housing solutions a lever in her human rights efforts in Brazil, working with several partners to help balance social development inequities.
But her single largest commitment went to Habitat for Humanity and its 84 affiliates across the U.S that same year, totaling $436 million. Twenty-five million of the total was directed globally, although not going specifically toward Home Equals.
Habitat for Humanity’s growing reach
What began as a Christian housing organization on a community farm in Georgia in 1976 is now among the largest charities based in the U.S., with work spanning the globe. Of the more than $2 billion the organization and its affiliates took in during FY 2022, about 70% was from contributions, grants and donated products and services. Some of its biggest supporters include Home Depot Foundation and pharmaceutical company AbbVie, among other corporate philanthropies, and major donors last year included the Hilti Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and retired real estate CEO J. Ronald Terwilliger.
Driven by the belief that everyone needs a decent place to live, the organization works in local communities across all 50 states and in more than 70 countries. Its volunteer model gives people a hand up in improving their own living situations, working alongside them in ways that literally build housing, while delivering ancillary benefits like stability and self-reliance.
Millions have built and rehabbed homes through Habitat’s construction services, and more than 18 million people worldwide have benefited from increased access to livable housing thanks to its advocacy campaigns. Today, the organization feels that the firsthand experiences and community-building skills it’s gained along the way put it in a strong position to help.
Home Equals
The Home Equals campaign carries the goal of increasing equitable access to fair housing for informally housed global urban dwellers. The model hinges attaining equity to advocacy work.
CEO Jonathan Reckford said Habitat sees policy changes as the key to overcoming factors of inequity like race and financial circumstance. “We know that adequate and affordable housing can be a lever to help address so many societal challenges. Our vision of a world where everyone has a decent place to live demands that we view housing as a catalyst to promote equity.”
It takes proximate approach, empowering residents to advocate for themselves and their neighbors on clean water, sanitation and securing tenure, and working alongside local leaders to advocate for changes in laws and policies.
While recognizing that nearly 90% of the expected increase in the informally housed is expected to occur in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, the campaign is active across 35 countries — a number that’s expected to grow.
In Uganda, Home Equals champions low-cost housing in urban areas, as well as basic service provision in informal settlements in the nation’s capital, Kampala. In Kenya, it’s partnering with local government to improve home construction, sanitation and land recordation. In Indonesia, the work centers on housing rehab programs and improved tenure rights for tenants.
In light of the new administration’s recent and historic commitments to address housing, it’s also working with the new administration in Brazil to boost civil society organizations and process participation, and to influence discussions about new housing design and urban infrastructure programs.
Four facets
Home equals works across four facets to improve outcomes for the informally housed. It empowers the participation of all stakeholders in sharing their collective needs; creates an “integrated and inclusive” approach to securing basic services like water and waste removal; helps build resilience in the face of climate change; and works to secure tenure, or the legal right to stay put that spurs security and long-term investments.
An example of its basic service work is a an overarching water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) strategy that lands in efforts like establishing a biosand filter in rural Tajikistan, converting toilet waste to sustainable food sources in Liberia and Ethiopia, and environmental conservation programs in coastal areas of Mexico and Kenya.
Its efforts to build resilience policies in the face of climate change include taking a leadership role at the COP28 climate change conference, where it urged delegates to prioritize the needs of the informally housed when mitigation measures are decided and adaptions are made.
But it doesn’t just speak for them. Habitat for Humanity considers this a critical juncture for residents of informal communities to have their own strong voice in decision-making. CEO Jonathan Reckford said, “When it comes to shaping the places we call home, all of us, no matter where we live, deserve to be treated as equals. Where someone lives has a direct impact on so many other facets of their life. Because home equals health. Home equals safety and security. And home equals opportunities for a better future.”
