According to the United Nations, 1.6 billion people around the world live without adequate housing. Poor housing leads to poor health, poor education, lack of physical security and myriad other challenges. Extensive research demonstrates that improving housing breaks the cycle of poverty.
But ‘improving housing’ involves more than building. It requires more than a sturdy roof to protect from rain or walls to shelter from sun and wind. It is more than a door that locks out potential danger or a solid floor to guard against disease. Better housing also requires something even more foundational: land.
A lack of access to land lies at the heart of poverty housing in four major ways: tenure, gender, slums and disaster resilience. In countries without a strong system of land documentation, hundreds of thousands of people live in fear of being evicted – tossed out of their homes with no legal remedy. Even where there is a system in place, laws and customs often fail to protect women or ensure that women have the education and resources needed to assert their rights. Further, as the world continues to urbanize, affordable space becomes increasingly scarce, forcing many individuals and families in cities to locate in slums. Finally, conflict and natural disasters displace millions of people every year, often leaving them without a clean, decent place to live.
Land issues create formidable obstacles to ending poverty housing.
As U.S. President Barack Obama remarked while in Myanmar in late 2012, “When ordinary people have a say in their own future, then your land can’t just be taken away from you. And that’s why reforms must ensure that the people of this nation can have that most fundamental of possessions—the right to own the title to the land on which you live and on which you work.”
If we want to see a world without poverty, we must first focus on housing – and one of the key first steps to housing is addressing vital issues around land. Seeing the connection between access to land and economic growth – both for individuals and countries – it is important to promote smart policies addressing land. For example, sufficient legal and regulatory systems to address tenure in the wake of man-made and natural disasters, laws that end gender discrimination in land ownership, and efforts to address corruption around land issues. Removing unnecessary obstacles to adequate housing will create a world where everyone has a decent place to live.
By Rick Hathaway, Habitat for Humanity’s vice president for Asia-Pacific
Heron Holloway
Director, Communications, Asia-Pacific
Habitat for Humanity International • Asia-Pacific Office
Q House, 8th floor, 38 Convent Road, Bangkok 10500, Thailand
Tel: +66 2632 0415
hholloway@habitat.org
habitat.org/asiapacific
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